Recipient of 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award

Part of MLK lecture series

Kerry Kennedy to moderate

Lucas Benitez, co-founder and co-director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, will be a panelist at Speak Truth to Power, part of The Martin Luther King Jr. 2010 Commemorative Lecture Series at Vanderbilt University. The event will be moderated by Kerry Kennedy, American human rights activist and author of Speak Truth to Power, at Benton Chapel at 7:00 p.m.

According to the press release, "Benitez helped secure the first wage increase for tomato pickers in 20 years, exposed and stopped two slavery rings and launched a Labor Action Rights program that collected nearly $100,000 in back wages" and that he "organized a successful boycott of the fast-food chain Taco Bell that was called off in 2005 when the company agreed to address the wages and working conditions of farm workers in the Florida tomato industry."

For more on Benitez, see his remarks upon accepting the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. It was the first time in the award's then-20-year history that it was presented to a U.S.-based organization.

See also this interview by the American Bar Association in 2000, this interview by Free the Slaves in 2005, this 2007 New York Times article, this transcript of his testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in 2008, and the web site of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Here is the press release for tonight's event:

Kerry Kennedy, human rights activist, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and author of Speak Truth to Power will moderate a panel discussion on activism and justice Thursday, Jan. 28, at 7 p.m. at Vanderbilt University.

The event is free and open to the public and will be held in Benton Chapel.

Kennedy’s book, Speak Truth to Power, seeks to promote a more just and peaceful world by galvanizing public support for international human rights through cultural, educational and Web-based programs. A non-profit organization of the same name was started to engage the general public in an ongoing series of issue-related programs and events, bringing human rights activists and their work to wider audiences.

The book has also inspired a play by Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman, a photographic exhibition by Pulitzer Prize-winner Eddie Adams, a PBS documentary film, and an education packet. The Speak Truth to Power organization is a division of the nonprofit Robert F. Kennedy Memorial.

The panelists at the Vanderbilt event include:

- Lucas Benitez, the co-founder and co-director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. By educating and organizing fellow migrant farm workers, he has helped secure the first wage increase for tomato pickers in 20 years, exposed and stopped two slavery rings and launched a Labor Action Rights program that collected nearly $100,000 in back wages. He organized a successful boycott of the fast-food chain Taco Bell that was called off in 2005 when the company agreed to address the wages and working conditions of farm workers in the Florida tomato industry.

- Stephen Bradberry, the head organizer of Louisiana ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for ReformNow. ACORN has been active in communities of color for more than 30 years. Bradberry has served in low and moderate-income neighborhoods in Louisiana for more than a decade. His chapter of the national community group, ACORN, has more than 10,000 member families and works specifically in the area of living wages, environmental justice and voting rights.

- Marina Pisklakova, an internationally recognized leading women’s rights activist in Russia. As founder of the National Center for the Prevention of Violence “ANNA” she works on creating an effective system of response to domestic violence by educating governmental officials and the public about the issue of domestic violence in Russia and other countries. For the past 12 years she has been involved in training for newly established crisis centers for women, for law enforcement and other governmental officials on the topics of domestic violence, human trafficking and women’s human rights.

For more information about Speak Truth to Power, visit www.speaktruth.org.

Labels: business, education, justice

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Dear New York Times:

Please look at the frequency of your paper's use of the word "illegal" as an adjective to describe individuals in the comparative contexts of (a) immigration law and (b) other laws.

You may find to your chagrin that immigrants are nearly the only group of people you describe as "illegal," and immigration law is the only law the Times reports on this way.

The January 3, 2010 article "Whither the Dream" uses the term "illegal student" in the context of immigration law.

The January 8, 2010 blog post "Italy Puts Swiss Tax Haven Under Siege," however, described a separate category of lawbreaking - tax evasion - without once using the noun or adjective "illegal" to describe the lawbreakers themselves. The author's descriptions of the people who had violated the law were "the rich," "tax evaders," "Italians," and "Italian clients."

The disparity between the January 3 article on immigration law and the January 8 blog post on tax law is not attributable to the difference between your paper's articles and its blog posts. The difference is representative of a broader trend at the Times.

A Google search for the word "illegal" on your pages reveals numbers of people described in headlines as "illegal" if the law at issue is immigration, but the same treatment of anyone else in regard to any other law is rare. And when the Times switches to other words besides "illegal," to describe a person it's seldom in regard to immigration. A search for the word "lawbreaker" on your pages shows approximately 750 occurrences, but only 55 also include the word "immigrant." How often do the words "illegal" and "immigrant" appear in the same story together? 13,600. How many appearances of the words "illegal immigrant"? 4,740.

If the standard for reporting on people who break the law is to predominantly use neutral terms like "the rich," "Italians," and "lawbreakers," then it's questionable to switch to a vocabulary modifying your descriptions of people with a legal adjective - "illegal" - just because the law is immigration.

So please start referring to students as "students" and leave it at that.

For the sake of variety, you may still decide it is appropriate to occasionally throw in a legal description of a person, as was done once with the term "tax evaders" in the tax-related blog post. May I suggest that for immigration law, the adjectives "visaless" and/or "unvisaed" are more specific than "illegal" or even "undocumented" or "unauthorized," because it's the lack of a visa (or immigration-specific authorization) that more specifically describes people without immigration status. If you search for usage of the term "unvisaed" here in the U.S., you won't find it much, but it's a commonly used term in Australia. "Visaless" is an even more common term. Both are reasonable alternatives. If you find these unacceptable, maybe no adjective is useful, and you may find it helpful to focus on describing behavior instead of characterizing people.

At least be consistent between your descriptions of people who are on the wrong side of immigration laws and people who are on the wrong side of tax laws.

Best regards,

John Lamb
Nashville, TN

Make your voice heard here.

Photo by Thomas Hawk. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Scene reports on the status of the DREAM Act

The Nashville Scene recently reported on "Oscar," a Nashville high school student with the kind of immigration problem that can get him deported, and the DREAM Act, the kind of legislation that can fully integrate him into American society.

I recently met Oscar at a conference, and his leadership in one of the sessions impressed me. I found out afterwards about his immigration problem. It crushed me. The same thing had happened to me over and over again when my family and I attended the Primera Iglesia Bautista on Murfreesboro Road, when people I knew for months would come up to me about their own immigration problems once word got to them that I was a lawyer.

The sad reality was (and is) that there are few immigration problems that can be fixed. It's a dead end, for the most part.

Dedicated youth like Oscar who have no individual culpability for the fact that they don't have a visa deserve at least one chance to earn legal status. Many already demonstrate personal responsibility in the circumstances they can control, like their studies, and as in Oscar's case, in extracurricular activities as well, where leadership skills flourish. The DREAM Act would verify that these students have kept their noses clean and done everything that's been expected of them through the end of high school, and grant them legal status. It would no longer be a dead end.

Instead of wasting the beneficial America-child relationship that has been developing throughout their young lives, we should be realizing that these young immigrants are already assets - already "us" - and make sure our laws see them that way.

The DREAM Act is a wonderful start. The Scene story has more details about the law and about students like Oscar. Aunt B. also has an August post entitled "Kids Who Need the Dream Act," among others.

Getting the DREAM Act passed

U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper told the Scene that a lot more work is needed to make the DREAM Act a reality:

"Right now the DREAM Act is a dream," he tells the Scene flatly. "And to turn that into reality is going to take a whole lot more work than anybody has put in so far."
...
Cooper adds that even if the DREAM Act passed in Congress, the Tennessee legislature would have to green-light portions of the legislation, mainly the question of whether to allow in-state tuition to undocumented students.

Well, at least one form of work to make the DREAM Act a reality is to contact our represented officials. Contact your U.S. representative at writerep.house.gov, and contact your U.S. senators at alexander.senate.gov and corker.senate.gov. (Remind Alexander and Corker that Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and Republican Senator Richard Lugar have been sponsors.)

In the House, Representative Steve Cohen is already a sponsor.

Labels: education, immigrants, justice

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Journalists, politicians, and anyone interested in politics, take note.

On Sunday, Chas Sisk's top-of-the-fold Tennessean cover story on business tax amnesty demonstrated how to describe unlawful behavior without using the noun or adjective "illegal" to describe the lawbreaker.

The word choices to describe the people who had violated the law were simple: "businesses," "companies," "people," "businesspeople," and "owners."

Only two terms in the article turned the lawless behavior into a noun or adjective that described the offender: "scofflaws" and "noncompliant businesses." These terms were used half as frequently as the generic terms such as "businesses" and "people." The term "illegal" doesn't appear once.

If the standard for Americans who break the law is to predominantly use terms like "businesses" and "people," then it's slanted to commonly describe foreigners who break the law as "illegal" or "undocumented," and picking one word over the other can't make the descriptions any more accurate or any less unequal.

As I said last month, how we handle our words when we describe foreigners is a moral issue. If we tend to avoid certain words (like "illegal") when we describe an American who breaks the law, we mustn't favor that vocabulary when it's a foreigner who breaks the law. Being even-handed in our criticism of Americans and foreigners is about being morally, not politically, correct.

For a run-down of the Tennessean article's exact word choice, see here.

See also: Elizabeth Wright is pro-amnesty and Even tax collectors want to make compliance easy.

Labels: immigrants, justice

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Earlier this month, I was buying a "tres leches" cake at the La Espiga bakery on Nolensville Road.

If you haven't tasted tres leches cake, it's kind of moist. I don't really have a taste for it, but it's my wife's favorite, and it was her birthday.

As I was paying for the cake (and a few other pastries we called "Berliners" in Chile), I noticed a box next to the cash register, with this message:

"I need your cooperation with little boy Axel. He was born with a bone problem called 'antigriposis.' His parents Alexis and Alan were reported, and the three children stayed behind with their grandmother. I ask you for your help, brothers. May God bless you."

Axel, Alexis, and Alan: three names of Hispanic Nashvillians. Two of them - the "reported" parents, may or may not return here to be Nashvillians ever again. If they do, it will almost certainly constitute an immigration violation, at least under current law.

What "la espiga" means, and Jesus' lawbreaking disciples

Before I sat down at the computer to post this picture and this story, I had thought "La Espiga" - the name of this bakery - meant "the crumb." Actually, "miga" is the word for crumb, and "la espiga" means, "the head of grain." It's a word that comes up a lot in the Bible.

I went looking for some "head of grain" verses, and three of the four times the word appears in the Gospels is in a story about Jesus and his disciples being rebuked for lawbreaking.

One recounting of the story is in Mark 2:23-28 (NLT):

One Sabbath day as Jesus was walking through some grainfields, his disciples began breaking off heads of grain to eat. But the Pharisees said to Jesus:

Look, why are they breaking the law by harvesting grain on the Sabbath?

Jesus said to them:

Haven’t you ever read in the Scriptures what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He went into the house of God (during the days when Abiathar was high priest) and broke the law by eating the sacred loaves of bread that only the priests are allowed to eat. He also gave some to his companions.

My thoughts turn to Axel, Alexis, and Alan during this Nashville Christmas.

Labels: faith, justice, spanish

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Criticism not applied to Americans, and not specific

The importance of a name

Whether the word "illegal" is an appropriate way to describe someone with an immigration problem is the subject of debate again.

On Tuesday, USA Today prominently used the term "illegal students" in an otherwise informative article about students trapped in their immigration status, and Change.org organized a petition in protest. I think it's important to sign the Change.org petition, even though I would quibble with its wording.

The use of "illegal" as an adjective or a noun has bothered me for a while. In October, 2006, a reader-inspired fake ad campaign (sample above) pointed out the ethical problem of how Americans break the law but never call ourselves "illegal." One of my January 2007 posts called out the Tennessean when it used the word "illegal" as a noun in a headline, a practice which the National Association of Hispanic Journalists said they are "particularly troubled" by. In October of this year, Kleinheider noticed my use of the term "visaless" in one of my stories about the Baby Yair case, in which the State wouldn't turn over a rescued baby to family members on the grounds of their immigration status.

Name-calling is easy when the name can't apply to you

When a label is a criticism, it's ethically important for the label to be one that could apply to the person making the criticism.

We all know we don't use "illegal" in the same way when we describe Americans with other legal problems. I remember seeing "illegal" used as a noun in an ABC News headline recently, so on a lark I just searched Google News for all ABC News stories using the word "illegal" in a headline. I went through ten pages of results, and there wasn't a single reference to an American lawbreaker. There were a few references to illegal conduct by Americans outside the context of immigration, but no use of the word "illegal" to describe the American person or people in the story.

A Google search revealed some reference to "visaless" in reference to Americans traveling abroad without permission, so that gives the label greater credibility as one that could be used in reference to foreign citizens who are traveling or living abroad (here) without permission.

The words "internationals" or "expatriates" are other words that are more often used to describe Americans abroad that could be adopted into our vocabulary of describing foreign citizens here.

Be specific

In describing the status of someone with immigration problems, "visaless" and/or "unvisaed" are also more specific than "illegal" or even "undocumented" or "unauthorized," because it's the lack of a visa that more specifically describes people without immigration status. Most visaless people usually are in possession of whatever documents the government allows them to have - you've never seen a visaless immigrant driving without a license plate, have you? And until the change in TN law, unvisaed immigrants had drivers' licenses, which made the concept of a driver who is legally licensed but still referred to as "undocumented" even more clearly nonsensical.

If you search the web for "unvisaed" you don't see the term used much here in the U.S., except by me in the pages of HispanicNashville.com - but it's a commonly used term in Australia. As mentioned above, "visaless" is an even more common term. Both are reasonable alternatives.

And just to be clear on two points: First, figuring out what word to use is not the same thing as figuring out or making a statement on what immigration law is or how people should act in regard to immigration law. Second, I use and have used a variety of terms to describe problematic immigration status (including the less favored ones described here), so my point in this post is not to force or prohibit the use of one term or another, but to encourage the use of the best possible terms.

"I have called you by your name"

Along those lines of encouraging the use of the best possible terms, and all this having been said, it's worth remembering that the best label for someone is their name.

Some people like to joke that those of us who resist the term "illegal" would call a thief in our homes an "undocumented explorer" or something like that. In response to that kind of joke, and putting aside for a moment the fact that they wouldn't use the term "illegal thief" either, my thought is that if someone is living and working in your house and getting paid for that work for a number of years, it's you that's out of place if you're calling them anything other than their name.

The importance of a name was eloquently invoked by Phil Bennett of Belmont Church in his recent post, "His name is James." I encourage you to read Phil's full post here. In the comments, Becky Nickins drove the point home for Christians:

"I have called you by your name; you are Mine”
Is. 43:1

Labels: immigrants, justice

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WHO: Moderator, Attorney Lynda Jones-The Jones Law Group PLLC
Panelist, Attorney Jerrilyn Manning- Member of TN Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
Panelist, Attorney Dawn Deaner- Metropolitan Public Defender
Interpreters, Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

WHAT: KNOWING YOUR RIGHTS IN A TRAFFIC STOP

WHEN: Saturday, December 5, from 9a.m. to noon
Free and open to the public

WHERE: PJ Hall of Fisk University's Jubilee Hall

From the Nashville Metro Police website:

Any person who feels that he or she has been mistreated by a sworn officer or a civilian employee of the police department has the right to make a complaint.
...
If at any time an officer or an employee of the Metropolitan Police Department mistreats, harasses, intimidates or commits a crime against you, remember the names of the officers, what they looked like and the time and date of the event.

You should then report the incident immediately. It may be reported to the officer's immediate supervisor, or any other person responsible for supervising the officer. It may also be reported to the Office of Professional Accountability (hereinafter O.P.A.), the Human Relations Commission or the Offices of the NAACP or the Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Photo by Kipp Baker. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Fabian Bedne, one of the Nashvillians mentioned in the article
"Finding Nashville's Hispanic Voice" is the title of today's Nashville City Paper article that takes a deeper dive into the city's Hispanic politicians and how more might appear in the future.

Among the people quoted are Fabian Bedne, Yuri Cunza, Cesar Muedas, Mario Ramos, and me:

The election of Latinos can be accelerated by these and other appointments to boards and commissions, said John Lamb, editor of the Hispanic Nashville Notebook — one of several Web sites dedicated to news about the city’s Hispanic community.

“Maybe it’s more likely for someone to be electable when they’ve been introduced to the community in places where they can serve,” he said.

Lamb pointed to how Bedne’s community involvement served as something of a launching pad.

Read the full article, written by Tim Ghianni, here.

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"They should be allowed to stay...": 51.0%

The 2009 MTSU poll asked this question:

Which comes closest to your view about illegal immigrants who are currently working in the U.S.?

• "They should be allowed to stay in their jobs, and to eventually apply for US citizenship."
• "They should be allowed to stay in their jobs only as temporary guest workers, but not to apply for U.S. citizenship."
• "They should be required to leave their jobs and leave the U.S."

And these were the answers:

"They should be allowed to stay...": 51.0%

• "...and to eventually apply for U.S. citizenship": 29.4%
• "...but not to apply for U.S. citizenship": 21.6%

"They should be required to leave...": 42.8%

Conducted by Middle Tennessee State University’s College of Mass Communication, the telephone poll of 716 randomly selected Tennessee adults has an error margin of plus or minus four percentage points at the 95 percent level of confidence. Theoretically, this means that a sample of this size should produce a statistical portrait of the population within four percentage points 95 out of 100 times. The Survey Group at MTSU provides independent, non-partisan and unbiased public opinion data regarding major social, political and ethical issues affecting Tennessee. The poll began in 1998 as a measure of public opinion in the 39 counties comprising Middle Tennessee and began measuring public opinion statewide in 2001. Learn more and view the full report on the poll’s website, www.mtsusurveygroup.org.

Seventy-five percent of Tennessee Hispanics are U.S. citizens or legal residents (story here).

Illustration by HispanicNashville.com

Labels: business, immigrants, justice, statistics

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Metro Council Member Frank Harrison

City Paper also provides broad coverage of opposition viewpoint

Last Tuesday, October 20, three Metro Council members expressed Nashville's first official opposition to 287(g) in its current form. "287(g)" is the name for the program that ratchets up the interactions between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. In some of the 60 or so jurisdictions where 287(g) is in place, thousands of people have been deported even though they are not dangerous criminals. Nashville is one of those jurisdictions.

The council members voting against 287(g) were Megan Barry, Sam Coleman and Frank Harrison.

I asked Frank Harrison why he voted the way he did, and this was his response:

I felt that it was the right thing for me to do and would have preferred some debate before the vote. Perhaps more would have felt the same. Also I would not feel comfortable being part of causing hardships on families.

The lack of debate before the vote was reported by the Tennessean here and lamented by local blogger Aunt B. here:

If you cannot face the people most affected by a decision you make and explain your reasons for making your decision, even if it will be wildly unpopular with them, it tells both you and those people something–that you know you’re doing the wrong thing.

Monday's City Paper gave opponents' points a lot of ink, starting with the main story:

"The reality of the program here is that the vast majority of people who are being identified by this program have committed misdemeanors,” Esquivel said. “Rather than focusing on what I think there's a broad consensus on — which is using this program to target real criminals — we're using it to target people who are not criminals in any sense that the community had in mind when this was rolled out or what it ought to be used for.”

The City Paper's anonymous columnist "Rex Noseworthy" caught a hypothetical about the potential economic impact of 287(g):

“How long will it be a until a Nissan executive from Mexico has a rental car with a faulty blinker and winds up in a Metro jail because of it?” Esquivel asked.

Kleinheider, from the City Paper's sister publication the Nashville Post, explored the influence of ideology on support for or opposition to 287(g):

Most people who support the 287(g) program no more want the police actively targeting undocumented workers to deport than most opponents want the government giving illegal immigrants unfettered access to public services.

The City Paper excerpts above are brief clips; there is more discussion about 287(g) in the full content of the main story here, in Rex's column here, and in Kleinheider's column here.

Labels: 287g, immigrants, justice

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Photo by Brent Moore. Licensed by Creative Commons.

How many peace-loving families have to be sacrificed to get rid of dangerous criminals?

Prayer vigil at 5:30 p.m.

Last night, I was at the Courthouse to watch the Metro Council public safety committee deliberate the "287(g)" agreement between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. Thousands of people have been deported out of Middle Tennessee as a result of the program, most of whom were not dangerous criminals. The 287(g) agreement was nonetheless unanimously approved by the committee.

Two 287(g) opponents were given the chance to express their concerns that people who aren't dangerous are being caught up in the program more than dangerous criminals are. David Esquivel, the son of Cuban immigrants, talked about the disproportionately severe impact on ordinary people in the immigrant community. Pastor Gwen Brown-Felder of Ernest Newman United Methodist Church offered the committee a vision of 287(g) as contrary to our faith. Her comments crystallized for me that we will look back on 287(g) in shame.

The good news is that a handful of council members asked thoughtful questions of the Sheriff, who gave his own presentation. At least two council members, however, took a simplistic view of the issue. One of them quoted the Bible and in the next breath concluded with, "what part of illegal don't you understand." So much for Letter from Birmingham Jail.

The committee's unanimous vote in favor of the program was disappointing. I left the Council chambers concerned for my hometown. To see the city so far from Brown-Felder's vision was disheartening.

As I was walking off the beautiful new lawn of Public Square, under a refreshingly clear field of stars, my only recourse was to pray. I prayed for my city. I prayed for the hearts of stone to be softened. God was close, bigger than the city machinations that had just taken place.

Below my feet as I faced War Memorial auditorium and the newly refurbished Deaderick Avenue, I noticed the word "STRENGTH" in an artistic feature in the Public Square pavement. "Strength" was a value the committee likely thought it was implementing perfectly by approving 287(g) without a second thought. I wondered what other values appeared in the pavement around the circle-shaped lawn, and whether there might be a complimentary value to strength that the city aspired to. I walked around the circle to the towers that bump up against the Cumberland River to see what was the counterbalance to "Strength."

It was "PROTECTION" - surely another value that the committee would consider it had upheld last night. Was I surprised that "Strength" would be balanced by "Protection" - definitely, yes. Not much of a check and balance.

Then I noticed I wasn't done examining the circle. In the 6 o'clock position in the circle there was another value.

It was "WISDOM."

Particularly appropriate that wisdom is the closest of the three values to the new reflecting pools and also to the fountain that rises from the ground at the southern entrance to the plaza. A city that so thoughtfully developed this place of reflection and meditation rightly honored wisdom with this central and thoughtful location.

It's an empty wisdom, however, that merely defers to strength and protection instead of informing the exercise of those values. In the words of Primo Levi:

A country is considered the more civilized the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak or a powerful one too powerful.

The charge of this city to the members of the Metro Council is that they bring wisdom to their full vote on 287(g) tonight. I would ask council members, have you spent any time with immigrants and their world-class advocates in Nashville, without which it is impossible to fully consider the facts about an immigrant-related local program?

Have you asked how many peace-loving families have to be sacrificed to get rid of dangerous criminals? Can the disproportions ever become so great before the trade-off is deemed unjust, inefficient and unwise?

Constituents of Nashville's council, please ask yourself the same questions and urge your representatives to write our laws and give our city's approval not just with safety or protection in mind. Wisdom calls for more.

A prayer vigil will be held tonight at 5:30 p.m. at the Courthouse.

For more on the strength, protection, and wisdom symbolism at the Courthouse, as well as other values, see Paragraph II B of this 1981 report by Ann Reynolds, Historic Preservationist, Historical Commission of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County and section 1.G. of this recent call for artwork to represent those values. See the diagram below for the layout of Public Square and the pavement decorations.

Labels: 287g, immigrants, justice

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Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

Headliner for "Hispanic Heritage Month Grand Finale Fiesta"

Gonzales was first Hispanic American and Mexican-American U.S. Attorney General

"I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror"

Honored by United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, League of United Latin American Citizens, Harvard Law School Association Award, Hispanic National Bar Association, United Way, others

Immigration status of three grandparents "unclear"

The Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Tennessee sent out an invitation to its "Hispanic Heritage Month Grand Finale Fiesta" featuring former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The event will take place on October 22, from 11:30 a.m. -1 p.m. at the Waller Lansden law firm downtown. The invitation is available at the end of this post and also at the RNHA of TN's new web address rnhaoftn.org

Washington career and "War on Terror"

Gonzales was sworn in as the nation's 80th Attorney General on February 3, 2005, and was the first Hispanic American and Mexican-American to hold that position. Prior to serving at the Department of Justice, he was commissioned as White House Counsel to President George W. Bush in January of 2001.

As both Attorney General and White House Counsel, Gonzales was a central figure in what the Bush administration described as the "War on Terror." Gonzales authored a controversial memo in January 2002 that explored the application of Article III of the Geneva Convention to Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan and held in detention facilities around the world. He also authored the Presidential Order which authorized the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. He fought with Congress to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy task force documents from being reviewed. Gonzales was also an early advocate of the controversial USA PATRIOT Act.

Gonzales' testimony before Congress about a domestic warrantless wiretap program and a related 2004 hospital visit he made to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was the subject of controversy that immediately preceded his resignation.

Gonzales has characterized his role in Washington as that of a scapegoat:

For some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.

Texas career

Prior to serving in the White House, Gonzales served as a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas. Before his appointment to the Texas Supreme Court in 1999, he served as Texas' 100th Secretary of State from December 2, 1997 to January 10, 1999. Among his many duties as Secretary of State, Gonzales was a senior advisor to then Governor Bush, chief elections officer, and the Governor's lead liaison on Mexico and border issues.

Prior to his appointment as Secretary of State, Gonzales was the General Counsel to Governor Bush for three years. Before joining the Governor's staff, he was a partner with the law firm of Vinson & Elkins L.L.P. in Houston, Texas. He joined the firm in June 1982. While in private practice, Gonzales also taught law as an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Honors

Among his many honors, in 2003 Gonzales was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Alumni Hall of Fame, was honored with the Good Neighbor Award from the United States-Mexico Chamber of Commerce, and received President's Awards from the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the League of United Latin American Citizens. In 2002, he was recognized as a Distinguished Alumnus of Rice University by the Association of Rice Alumni and was honored by the Harvard Law School Association with the Harvard Law School Association Award. Gonzales was recognized as the 1999 Latino Lawyer of the Year by the Hispanic National Bar Association, and he received a Presidential Citation from the State Bar of Texas in 1997 for his dedication to addressing basic legal needs of the indigent. He was chosen as one of the Five Outstanding Young Texans by the Texas Jaycees in 1994, and as the Outstanding Young Lawyer of Texas by the Texas Young Lawyers Association in 1992. Gonzales was honored by the United Way in 1993 with a Commitment to Leadership Award, and received the Hispanic Salute Award in 1989 from the Houston Metro Ford Dealers for his work in the field of education.

Family, education, military service

Gonzales was born in San Antonio, Texas and raised in a small town outside of Houston. He was the second of eight children born to Maria Gonzales, who had a sixth grade education, and Pablo Gonzales, a construction worker who had a second-grade education. According to Gonzales, it's "unclear" whether his three Mexican-born grandparents entered and resided in the United States legally or illegally.

He is a graduate of Texas public schools, Rice University, and Harvard Law School. Gonzales served in the United States Air Force between 1973 and 1975, and attended the United States Air Force Academy between 1975 and 1977. He and his wife, Rebecca Turner Gonzales, have three sons.

Gonzales currently teaches a political science course at Texas Tech University.

Invitation

The invitation to the October 22 event is below:

The RNHA Invites You:

To Celebrate,
Hispanic Heritage Month Grand Finale Fiesta

and meet Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

October 22nd
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
at the Law Offices of Waller/Lansden
511 Union St 27th Floor

$35.00 per person
R.S.V.P. by October 20th at
rauljlopez@comcast.net

11:15 a.m.
Private Photo Reception at the Hermitage Hotel

If you are interested in attending the Private Photo Reception
with Alberto Gonzales and/or the Lunch Fiesta please call
Juan Borges at (615) 579-5161 or email Raul Lopez at rauljlopez@comcast.net

Lunch Hosts
Mayor Bill Haslam and Congressman Zach Wamp
State Senator Bill Ketron, Jim Tracy, Diane Black and Dolores Gresham
State Representative Beth Harwell and Glen Casada, Steve Lynn, Tera Vazquez, Nelson Remus, Rene Valadez
Tim Skow, Sylvia Marcela Gomez, Attorney of Law Diana Cachaya and Jesus Cachaya, Attorney of Law Larry Crain, Attorney of Law Paul Ney, Wilson County Republican Party

Biographical information courtesy of U.S. government and Wikipedia. U.S. government text is in the public domain. Wikipedia text is under a Creative Commons license; this post may be reproduced under the same terms of that license.

Labels: events, justice

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"DCS is supposed to try to keep families together and there were plenty of relatives willing to take in the children"

2009 Ketron bill would make i.d. available to qualified visaless applicants

Nashvillian Maria Gurrola has been cleared of the baby-selling allegations that arose following the abduction of her son, Yair Carillo, but those allegations put her children in state custody for a few days until she was cleared. Yesterday, Travis Loller of the Associated Press reported the reason for the taking of the children.

Loller reports that the Tennessee Department of Children's Services ("DCS") took Maria Gurrola's children away from her during the investigation of the now-disproven allegations because some of Gurrola's family members, who could have otherwise taken the children, are visaless and don't have sufficient I.D. for a background check:

Maria Gurrola, still recovering from stab wounds and a collapsed lung, started crying and shaking when she learned week-old Yahir Anthony Carrillo and his three siblings would be put into foster homes, said Norma Rodriguez, the cousin of Jose Carrillo, the baby's father.
...
[Gurrola's court-appointed attorney Dennis] Nordhoff questioned the need to put the already-suffering family through the trauma of separation. He said DCS is supposed to try to keep families together and there were plenty of relatives willing to take in the children, but DCS would not allow it because they were illegal immigrants, although some of them had been in the country for many years without ever getting in any trouble. Gurrola is originally from Durango, Mexico.
...
[DCS Spokesman Rob] Johnson, speaking generally, said, "DCS always looks for relatives who already know a child as an alternative to state custody, but DCS must be able to perform background checks and DCS must be able to verify people's relationships to a family in question."

Over 40,000 visaless Tennesseans were stripped of their I.D. when the state changed its drivers license law in 2004. A 2009 bill by State Senator Bill Ketron (R) would make a state-issued I.D. available to qualified visaless applicants.

Gurrola's experience is another example of why it is important for everyone to be able to have I.D. Also, it's the first time that the family members' immigration status has been reported in a way that is relevant to the Gurrola story (see my Monday and Tuesday discussions of the relevance of immigration status to this story).

I say "visaless" and/or "unvisaed" instead of "undocumented," because it's the lack of a visa that more specifically describes people without immigration status. Most visaless people usually are in possession of whatever documents the government allows them to have - you've never seen a visaless immigrant driving without a license plate, have you? And until the change in TN law, the visaless had drivers' licenses, which made the term "undocumented" even more clearly inappropriate.

*And is it "Gurrola" or "Gurrolla"? The Tennessean and now Loller's AP piece are using "Gurrola." The Nashville police department had previously reported both spellings, even in the same press release, but it appears that corrections have been made to unify the police department's spelling to "Gurrolla." On the other hand, the FBI's criminal complaint against the alleged abductor uses "Gurrola" exclusively. Google News searches show that there are many more stories with the "Gurrolla" spelling than with the "Gurrola" spelling.

Photo by atom heart father. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: immigrants, justice

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Tennessean narrows focus to core question: "It's unknown why Gurrola was targeted and how her attacker knew when to strike"

I'm still struggling with whether it's right to report an alleged crime victim's immigration status, which was the basis of my post yesterday about Maria Gurrolla*, the Nashville mother who appeared before the press last week to report that her newborn son had been stolen by someone posing as an immigration agent.

Here's how an actual journalist (which I am not) compared the dilemma about mentioning immigration status in a story to the issue of mentioning race, and this quote was part of the Poynter.org piece I linked to yesterday:

Immigration, in some respects, is like another thorny identifier in stories: race. We've been taught that you only identify one's race if race is central to the story. Immigration status mandates a similar threshold. (Of course, identifying someone's race will never get them deported.)

My question is whether the alleged victim's actual immigration status should be in the story. Using the test above, is the victim's actual immigration status "central" to the story of an alleged abduction in which the alleged perpetrator posed as an immigration agent?

Here's why the immigration status of the alleged victim might not be central to the story, even when the alleged perpetrator poses as an immigration agent:

1. The Question. The central question is a combination of, "why was the alleged victim targeted," and "why was the immigration agent ruse chosen?"

2. The Possible Answers. Possible answers to one or both of those questions include the following:

(a) that the alleged victim had observable characteristics that are equated with problematic visa status, like the Spanish language and/or ethnicity (see “Alderman Cherry responded, ‘If they’re speaking Spanish, I tend to think they are illegal.’”)

(b) that the alleged victim had observable characteristics that are equated with the Hispanic community, which has a heightened word-of-mouth awareness of being on the wrong end of an immigration raid, whether justified or not, and also proximity to people who would be subject to an immigration raid, or

(c) the alleged victim’s actual immigration status, which if tenuous, and also if that fact was known by the alleged perpetrator, would imply that the perpetrator had more information about the alleged victim than what could be obtained by casual observation.

Addressing Question 1 by reporting that the alleged perpetrator's motive and strategy are unknown - as the Tennessean did this morning - is central to the story. Going straight to Answer 2(c) without even mentioning Question 1 is not central to the story. Answer 2(c) becomes central to the story after Question 1 has been mentioned first, as well as 2(a) and 2(b) or any other possible answers. Answer 2(c) also becomes central to the story when facts are revealed that make it the actual or more likely answer.

Why does this matter to me? Maybe because it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to see an alleged victim hounded by questions of what the victim might have done wrong. Also, if the assumption is that someone who opens the door for an immigration agent might be hiding an immigration problem, then what is the assumption about someone who refuses to open the door for an immigration agent?

Labels: immigrants, justice

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If someone posing as the IRS attacked you at work, would the press interview your accountant?

Boy found after 4-day search

Even before Maria Gurrolla's days-old son Yair Anthony Carillo was found after only four days, thanks to amazing police and investigative work, the abductor's ruse led the press to dedicate part of their stories to the immigration status of the mother (saying it was "unclear" or "unknown").

Why should the ruse of the criminal abductor lead to reporting on the immigration status of the victim? If someone posing as the IRS attacked you at work, would there be an investigation into your tax returns?

An AP report by Kristin Hall simultaneously brings up the immigration status of Gurrolla while pointing out that Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron said that her immigration status was "not significant to the investigation":

Police said they think the mom has been in Nashville about 10 years, but it isn't clear if she is an immigrant or a citizen. Her family has declined to talk about the issue, and police spokesman Don Aaron said her citizenship was not significant to the investigation.

According to a police press release, Gurrolla had to be hospitalized with stab wounds "to her head, neck, breast and thigh." It was also reported that Gurrolla had a collapsed lung as a result of the attack.

In 2008, journalist asked when immigration status is relevant

A year and a half ago in a column on Poynter.org, Mizanur Rahman of the Houston Chronicle asked the question, when is it relevant to report on the immigration status of crime suspects?

I'm wondering when it is relevant to report on the immigration status of victims.

Child abduction has hit Hispanic Nashvillians before

Kristin Hall's AP article rightly points out that an attempted abduction of another Hispanic Nashvillian child occurred in 2005, but with much worse results: the mother and her 3-year-old daughter were killed.

Labels: immigrants, justice

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State senator intervention is free, but the new process would cost $500

Speaker Ramsey and Deputy Speaker Ketron visit Hispanic Heritage Month networking lunch

A few weeks ago, I sat down across a lunch table from Tennessee State Senator Bill Ketron (R-13). Sen. Ketron's district comes within a stone's throw of my home, covering "western Rutherford County and all of Maury, Marshall and Lincoln counties," according to his web site. The site also points out that Ketron has been Deputy Speaker of the Senate since January 2009.

The event we attended was the Tennessee Hispanic Chamber of Commerce networking lunch celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, on September 3 at Chappy's on Church Street, in the Napoleon Banquet Room.

The conversation turned to state-level bills related to immigrants and immigration. Since I was across the centerpiece from Sen. Ketron, it was a little hard to hear. It seemed that I was hearing that Sen. Ketron supports the concept that people in the U.S. without a visa should nonetheless be able to identify themselves with I.D. issued here, and that "coming out of the shadows" is a good thing.

The background that led to this position seems to be that Sen. Ketron was once able to use his position in government to help someone get in line for either a visa or citizenship. I believe Ketron wrote a letter to the immigration authorities on behalf of this person.

Sen. Ketron thought there should be an easier way than having to go through your state senator.

His idea was that if a person comes here for a good reason and just wants to make a living and raise a family, coming clean and applying for immigration relief should be easier than it is currently. (For those who don't want to live here peacefully, they should be picked up and shipped out, he said.)

So what can a state senator do? For starters, he authored the bill identified as SB 2158. Under this bill, the State must issue an I.D. card to anyone proving identity and 15 days' residency in Tennessee. After two years of living with a trackable identity, good behavior gets the cardhold a letter from the state - just like the letter Sen. Ketron sent on behalf of his constituent - except instead of having to get the letter from a state senator, the cardholder gets it from the state itself (the bill is silent on which state agency would send the letter).

Here are some specifics about SB 2158:

• What will appear on the i.d. card, at a minimum:

  the cardholder's name, photograph, date of birth, gender, and an expiration date.

• How the state will verify the data on the card: the bill specifies the documents that establish identity and residence either by themselves or in combination with other documents, depending on the document.
• What the state will charge: $500 for adults; $250 for minors. If the Department of Safety come up with a way to verify income, it can offer discounts or even waivers to low-income applicants.
• Obligations imposed on recipients: any foreign citizen who applies for the card has to sign a form stating

  that the person pledges to learn the basics of the English language and abide by the laws of this state and country

• Sending a letter to the immigration authorities to show good behavior: two years after issuance of the card, if "the person has not been convicted of any felony or Class A misdemeanor" and if "the person passes a test on the basics of the English language" then

  the state shall work with the appropriate federal agencies to help the person become a citizen of the United States.

• Driving privileges conferred: none

Labels: immigrants, justice

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Courts disagreed on double-barrelled name, too

On July 12, 2005, the Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that the then-$4.1 million empire of successful Nashville businessman Salvador Guzman had to be shared with his ex-wife and children. On July 11, 2006, the Supreme Court of Tennessee reversed, adopting Mr. Guzman's argument that the 16-year relationship had been a bigamous marriage and was therefore void, but the Supreme Court awarded child support and "remanded for a determination of the existence of an implied partnership between the parties." The final determination on that "partnership" issue is not available on the tsc.state.tn.us web site where the two opinions above are found.

The history is that Himelda Fuentes filed for divorce from Salvador Guzman in September 2002, and Mr. Guzman sought to annul the couple's 1986 marriage by saying that it was invalid under Mexican law, on the basis of Fuentes' having been married in a civil ceremony in 1982 that wasn't ever terminated by divorce. The Court of Appeals ruled that the Tennessee marriage was valid, regardless of how it would be treated in Mexico, and thus the family assets were marital property. The trial court had also rejected Guzman's argument and had awarded Ms. Fuentes and the children approximately $800,000 in assets. The Court of Appeals upped that amount to $1,500,000.

The Supreme Court's declaration of a bigamous marriage ended the divorce petition after a four-year battle, with Guzman winning on the issue that there never was a marriage under Tennessee law, and therefore no marital property to distribute. Whether there was a "partnership" does not appear to have been litigated back up to the appellate level.

Double-barrelled name: "Mr. Guzman" or "Mr. Alvarez"?

The primary issue is interesting - namely, the cross-border effect of marriages and divorce. Less significant to the parties but curious nonetheless is the different abbreviations used by the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals referred to the parties as "Husband" and "Wife." They also referred to Mr. Guzman as "Mr. Guzman," dropping this footnote:

Although Mr. Guzman is designated as Salvador Guzman Alvares in the style of this case, we will refer to him either as Husband or Mr. Guzman, as that is the name he has used since emigrating to the United States.

The Supreme Court, however, abbreviated the name of Salvador Guzman as "Mr. Alvarez," dropping a footnote to explain that

Since emigrating to the United States, Mr. Alvares has used the name 'Salvador Alvares Guzman.' We shall refer to Mr. Alvares as his name appears in the complaint for divorce.

That footnote appears to have been intended as a direct correction of, or even an expression of disapproval of, the Court of Appeals' use of "Mr. Guzman." The Supreme Court appears to have assumed that his surname is the single "Alvares" and not a double-barrelled name, which is common practice throughout the world, and usually employed in the U.S. as a hyphenated last name. Double-barrelled names are more commonly unhyphenated in Mexico, which both courts knew to be the home country of the parties. Reviewing the full name used in the complaint - "Salvador Guzman Alvares" - the Supreme Court appears to have disregarded the possibility that the surname might be "Guzman Alvares" and that the only proper abbreviation of such a double-barrelled name would be "Guzman" and not "Alvares."

At the end of the day, it is up to the parties to clarify whether there is a double-barrelled name at issue, and what the proper abbreviation would be. I wonder what the attorneys used as abbreviations for their own clients in the papers filed with the courts - that would seem to be the best way to give the courts some guidance on the issue.

Labels: justice

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See Cartoons by Brian Fairrington - Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com - Email this Cartoon

If spontaneous reactions have a place in politics, let's set the groundwork for outbursts of compassion

"Compassion is not a new or sudden concept for her, awakened in this big moment."

The outburst during last week's health care address to Congress was about how and whether the unvisaed will get access to health care and health care benefits.

I said at the time that I am upset by the hotheadedness in any discussion about people who don't have a visa. As Baptist Minister Drew Smith recently said on Ethics Daily and Diana Butler Bass recently said on BeliefNet, respectively:

I am troubled that many folks are not concerned about developing a compassionate response to the immigration issue

and

I wish the American family's compassion could embrace undocumented immigrants.

In 2006, as part of the launch of the Welcoming Tennessee Initiative, I made the point that Americans are generally compassionate in one-on-one interactions, but that in politics we tend to switch that channel off:

Most businesses and organizations and individuals treat people with decency and self-respect on a one-to-one basis. But at least in the public dialogue we haven't heard a whole lot of these values.

If we bring compassion into our political discourse, we might stand shoulder to shoulder with politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said that the unvisaed shouldn't be scapegoated.

We might find that our voices echo these words of former President George W. Bush:

[W]e must remember that the vast majority of illegal immigrants are decent people who work hard, support their families, practice their faith, and lead responsible lives. They are a part of American life...

America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone. Feelings run deep on this issue, and as we work it out, all of us need to keep some things in mind. We cannot build a unified country by inciting people to anger, or playing on anyone's fears, or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain.

If spontaneous reactions have a place in politics, let's set the groundwork for outbursts of compassion. I'm reminded of this powerful sermon on the Egyptian princess' spur-of-the-moment decision to save Moses from the Nile:

The writer of Exodus tells us absolutely nothing about the life of the Pharaoh's daughter up to this point. We do not know how old she was or whether she had children of her own. We don't know what she has been doing with her freedom and privilege up to the day that she saw the little basket on the river bank. We are not told her opinion of her father's social policies. We don't know whether she has been arguing with her father, wringing her hands over the newspaper, joining protest marches, or just going on as usual, eating, drinking, and shopping at the mall. We don’t even know her name. All we know about her is what she did at that moment: she saw the basket, had it fetched, opened it, and seeing the crying baby she had pity. Whether her compassion was already deeply rooted in long-considered conviction, or whether it was awakened all at once by the baby's cries, we do not know. But I have a hunch.
...
[M]y hunch is that the Pharaoh's daughter has already been thinking about what is going on in Egypt. And she has already been practicing compassion in other ways. Compassion is not a new or sudden concept for her, awakened in this big moment.

Read or listen to the entire sermon here. (I think it's a must-read, with a fresh angle for just about any reader, whether you rarely - or frequently - think about immigrants and immigration.)

Going forward, as the American discussions continue about access to visas and benefits - and about the people to whom those lifelines are currently or will be out of reach - let's build up our political muscles of compassion to the point that the outbursts are in love.

Labels: faith, immigrants, justice

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This WSMV story quotes the First Amendment Center's executive director Gene Policinski on a proposed change by the Department of Homeland Security to reduce public access to 287(g) data:

"There's a very important factor here going back to colonial times, which is knowing who is in custody," said Gene Policinski, executive director of the Nashville and Washington, D.C.-based First Amendment Center.

"We don't 'disappear' people in America," he said, referring to a practice often associated with dictatorships in which people are detained by authorities who refuse to divulge where they're held or even if they are in custody.

Read the full story here.

The First Amendment Center was founded by John Siegenthaler the same year he stepped down from senior positions at the Tennessean and USA Today. The First Amendment Center is an operating program of the Freedom Forum, with offices at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and also Washington, D.C. and associations with the Newseum and the Diversity Institute.

Labels: 287g, immigrants, justice

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From TNCourts.gov:

The full list of appointees to the newly created Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission was announced today. The nine-member commission was appointed by the Tennessee Judicial Council, Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey and House Speaker Kent Williams.

The Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission, which replaces the Judicial Evaluation Commission, evaluates the performance of the appellate level judges who are up for re-election. Prior to the election, the commission will complete a thorough review of each judge’s performance and make a recommendation to either retain or replace each judge. These recommendations are placed in newspapers throughout the state to inform voters prior to the election.

The Judicial Council appointed the following members:
E. Riley Anderson of Knoxville – former Supreme Court justice
Jeffrey S. Bivins of Franklin – Circuit Court judge
John T. Fowlkes of Memphis – Criminal Court judge
Amy Reedy of Athens – Criminal Court judge
Renata Soto of Nashville – co-founder and executive director, Conexion Americas

Lt. Gov. Ramsey appointed the following members:
John Chase Rambo of Jonesborough – private attorney
Michael E Tant of Franklin – executive vice president, W.Z. Baumgartner & Associates, Inc.

Speaker Williams appointed the following members:
John Day of Brentwood – founding partner, Day & Blair
Henrietta Grant of Knoxville – retired educator

The members of the commission will convene in the coming weeks to begin their review of Supreme Court Justice Sharon Lee and Court of Appeals Judge John McClarty, who are up for re-election in August 2010. Upon completion of their review, the recommendation of the commission will be made public in March 2010.

Labels: justice

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Today I'm reminded of the 2006 opening of the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, and the hats-off given by the members of the Nashville Symphony to every member of the construction effort in gratitude for the completion of the symphony's new home.

It was later revealed that improper hiring practices were in place at the Schermerhorn (and also at the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital), which means that some of the people thanked in that inaugural year of the Symphony Center were visaless, and therefore without permission to work.

The fact remains, however, that everyone on that project worked.

Like justice, perhaps appreciation for a job well done should be blind.

It's gratitude we might consider not only on Labor Day but on any day we are blessed by the work done in the Symphony Center and in the Children's Hospital.

See also this Labor Day cartoon by Jim McCloskey.

Labels: business, justice

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This week, the Tennessean mentioned in passing the national controversy surrounding the detention by Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America of children and families at the T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor, Texas. The thrust of the story was the "upbeat outlook" of the company. A similar Tennessean story mentioning Hutto appeared in 2006 and focused on immigrant detention as a CCA profit opportunity.

In between those two stories in 2006 and 2009, the Tennessean mentioned the Hutto controversy only one other time, in a column about local blogs. The story was covered widely elsewhere.

The relative silence of CCA's hometown paper about the national firestorm of controversy surrounding Hutto, and the fact that the controversy is wrapping up due to the Obama administration's recent decision to stop sending children and families there, prompted me to bring this to the Tennessean's attention.

I sent the following e-mail this morning to the Tennessean's President & Publisher Ellen Leifeld, its Editor and VP Mark Silverman, and the local news desk, with cc's to the reporters I mentioned in the letter - Chris Echegaray, Ryan Underwood, and Getahn Ward:

Dear Tennessean:

I know you can't cover everything, and that you have to make difficult judgments about what is newsworthy for any given day. Without meaning to second-guess your news desk, I want to bring your attention to a national story with local ties that I think you missed. Maybe there is still some reporting to be done there.

Chris Echegaray's September 1 article "Analysts give CCA an upbeat outlook" dedicates a paragraph to Corrections Corporation of America's T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor, Texas, which Mr. Echegaray described as having "garnered national attention after reports of questionable treatment of immigrant families."

The national attention Echegaray mentions began in 2006, when CCA agreed to a federal proposal to detain children and families at the Hutto facility. Initial reports about the conditions of the facility garnered headlines at the New Yorker and front-page treatment at the New York Times. The story has also been the subject of multiple documentaries and protests, Congressional hearings, a landmark settlement between the ACLU and the federal government, and reports by the United Nations and Amnesty International. On August 6, 2009, the Obama administration announced that it would discontinue the child and family detention at Hutto.

Despite the national attention on this CCA facility since 2006, the Tennessean - the hometown newspaper of Nashville-based CCA - did not put any resources behind this story during its three-year history. Mr. Echegaray's recent paragraph was only the second brief mention in your pages. The first and only other allusion to the controversy surrounding the facility was the May 5, 2008 edition of Ryan Underwood's column about local blogs, which pointed to my reference to the New Yorker story on HispanicNashville.com. To date, the only interview conducted by the Tennessean about the Hutto facility's 2006 repurposing appeared in a pre-controversy May 21, 2006 Getahn Ward story describing the family detention as a profit opportunity for CCA.

If you are interested in more background about this story, I direct you to a Hutto news timeline I created here.

If there is any reporting left to be done about the family and child detention at Hutto, especially if that reporting is of the kind that only CCA's hometown paper can do, I would look forward to reading it.

Best regards,

John Lamb
Nashville, TN

Readers may remember these stories about Hutto on HispanicNashville.com.

Photo by Neal Sanche. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: business, immigrants, justice, national spotlight

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Nashville attorney Ana Escobar of Escobar & Parks has been named to the newly created Tennessee Judicial Nominating Commission, according to the Memphis Commercial Appeal. The purpose of the Commission is to submit names to the Governor for state judgeships.

According to the Commercial Appeal, 236 applicants applied for the 17 slots on the statewide commission. Escobar is the only Hispanic member of the group.

In 2003, Escobar ranked second in a Nashville Bar Association rating of candidates for Davidson County General Sessions Judge.

Labels: justice

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Returns filed by Conexion: 395

Target audience reached: 1461

United Way support: $9,000

Conexion Americas helped file 395 tax returns through its tax preparation service from July 2008-June 2009, according to the group's annual report. Conexion, Nashville's leading non-profit dedicated to the integration of Latino families, also received $9,000 from United Way for the tax preparation service.

Educational programs for taxpayers, some of whom don't use Conexion's tax preparation service, were also among the 2008-2009 achievements:

336 Latino workers increased their understanding of the US tax system and of their tax rights and responsibilities through 38 workshops conducted throughout Middle Tennessee as part of our Taxpayer Education and Outreach Program. An additional 30 educational programs about taxes reached over 1,125 Latino taxpayers.

Photo by Jacob Kearns. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: education, justice, statistics

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Health inspectors examine detainees on Angel Island, ca. 1917
Source: The National Archives

Massive release of entry data planned for 2010

Restrictive immigration laws led some Chinese immigrants to lie

Passage of time puts visa violations into perspective

The New York Times reports here that in 2010 the U.S. government will release immigration data on 53 million people, data which has accumulated over decades and was previously available only by cumbersome, piecemeal Freedom of Information Act requests:

Under an agreement signed this year, the files, on some 53 million people, will be gradually turned over by the Department of Homeland Security to the National Archives and Records Administration, beginning in 2010. The material, accounting for what officials describe as the largest addition of individual immigration records in the archives’ history, will be indexed and made available to anyone.

Descendants of Chinese immigrants are fearful of data that could lead to deportation, since the Chinese Exclusion Act forced many Chinese immigrants to lie to gain entry to the U.S.

The article describes one woman's discovery of her own father's deception:

Thelma Lai Chang obtained the 103-page file detailing immigration officials’ interviews with her father, who immigrated from China as a 12-year-old in 1922. Under the Chinese Exclusion Act, most Chinese were then barred from entering the United States, and her father used a fake identity, claiming to be the son of a family already in the country.

For those immigrants who are still alive, the release of this information is potentially dangerous:

For many among a generation of immigrants who dodged the Chinese Exclusion Act by inventing their heritage or spinning elaborate tales of lost documentation, the accessibility is alarming. ... They are afraid, they say, that lies told by young immigrants so many years ago and recorded in the files then could result in deportation now.

The U.S. government, however, is applying the principles of "time heals all wounds" - and the reasoning behind statutes of limitations (principles this site has favored in the context of immigration) - and says it will look the other way:

[O]fficials of the Homeland Security Department say the files will be used for historical purposes, not law enforcement. Further, records will not be released until the immigrant in question has died or turned 100, and the names of the living will be redacted.

Read statements by contemporary opponents of the Chinese Exclusion Act here, here, and here. Excerpts:

That enactments so utterly un-American could have been suffered to pass, appears so extraordinary... (source)

For a century we have accepted the grand announcement as true, that God has made of one flesh all the nations that dwell on the face of the whole earth, and that all have the same inalienable rights. Let us stand by these grand old truths, and bid the Chinaman, the Japanese and all others, welcome. (source)

Whether this statute against the Chinese or the statue to Liberty will be the more lasting monument to tell future ages of the liberty and greatness of this country, will be known only to future generations. Liberty, we Chinese do love and adore thee; but let not those who deny thee to us, make of thee a graven image and invite us to bow down to it. (source)

Maybe this Chinese-American immigration history is another reason why the "anchor baby" argument and acrimony about "illegals" have failed to gain traction.

Labels: chinese, history, immigrants, justice

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The story, as it was tweeted Wednesday night

Hutto is operated by Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, on contract from Immigration and Customs Enforcement

From twitter.com/hispanicnashtn:


No more detention of immigrant and refugee children at CCA's Hutto? http://bit.ly/G3yWc

Govt. will stop sending families and children to CCA's Hutto, a former prison facility http://bit.ly/Idyyz #immigration #ri4a #promigrant

2 arguments raised against Hutto family/child detention: actual conditions, & children don't belong in former jails

Hutto story dates back to May 05 closure news, then Dec 05 family/child detention contract. Timeline: http://bit.ly/gLZkR

2006 story: Family detentions improve CCA fortunes http://tinyurl.com/m73fq4 #Hutto

Protesters were at Hutto July 28 and were planning August 22 event as well http://tinyurl.com/l4negv

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had just issued a report on Hutto: http://tinyurl.com/nupkbw

In April 2008, Hutto was said to be a "model" - now Hutto isn't even a model for Hutto http://tinyurl.com/mnl6lg

December 2008: 1 commissioner votes against Hutto: “no matter how you look at it, it’s still a prison” http://tinyurl.com/nfc96c

H/T: Maribel Hastings

Composite graphic by HispanicNashville.com. Ingredients: Exit photo by Phil Hilfiker. Family sign photo by Paul Applegate. Statue of Liberty photo by Ludovic Bertron. Barbara Hines and UT Law Immigration Clinic photo by the UT Law magazine. Hutto photo by ICE.

Labels: business, immigrants, justice

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Tennessee's senior U.S. senator Lamar Alexander has announced his support of the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. From his floor statement:

Even though Judge Sotomayor's political and judicial philosophy may be different from mine, especially regarding second amendment rights, I will vote to confirm her because she is well qualified by experience, temperament, character, and intellect to serve as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
...
During the 8 years I was Governor of Tennessee, I appointed about 50 judges. In doing so, I looked for the same qualities Justice Roberts and Judge Sotomayor have demonstrated: intelligence, good character, restraint, respect for law, and respect for those who came before the court. I did not ask one applicant how he or she would rule on abortion or immigration or taxation. I appointed the first female circuit judge in our State and the first African-American court chancellor and the first African-American State supreme court justice. I appointed both Democrats and Republicans. That process served our State well and helped to build respect for the independence and fairness of our judiciary.

The Middle Tennessee Hispanic Democrats promptly praised Alexander's decision, calling it statemanship:

We thank Sen. Alexander for being a statesman instead of being a partisan demagogue. It’s important that we as a state promote tolerance and diversity in our communities and find a common ground to help all of Tennessee’s citizens.

Whether intentionally or not, Alexander's reference to his own credentials in building diversity in the Tennessee judiciary dovetails the advice of columnist Ruben Navarrette, who only one week earlier had lamented that Republicans weren't playing up their strengths in the context of Sotomayor's nomination. Here is an excerpt of Navarrette's column:

It was painful to watch them willingly surrender any shred of credit that the GOP deserves for putting Sotomayor on the road to make history as the first Latina Supreme Court justice. It was a Republican president - George H.W. Bush - who nominated Sotomayor to the federal bench in 1991. If the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were smart, they would have mentioned that fact over and over again to advance the notion that Republicans also at times open doors for women and minorities.

Navarette's column was entitled "We Are All Americans", a phrase also used by Mr. Alexander. The text is prominent on the Senator's web site, and Alexander has repeated it at least as far back as his his 1996 Presidential campaign.

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The Tennessean's Janell Ross has the story of new litigation in Nashville's Spanish-language newspaper industry.

Excerpts from the story:

A lawsuit filed July 21 in Davidson County Circuit Court by the Latino News accuses a former employee, Alfonso Nieto, of breach of contract, trademark infringement and theft of services in launching his competing Tennessee Latino News. Nieto declined Wednesday to comment on the suit because of a pending conciliation meeting.
...
Since 2000, at least 13 different Spanish, Portuguese and bilingual Spanish/English publications targeting the area's growing Latin American population have at one time been published or distributed in Nashville...

The full story is here.

Related stories from HispanicNashville.com:

• There are twenty ethnic media outlets in Nashville; some close doors in the down economy
• German-language press is part of historic Nashville

Labels: business, justice, spanish

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T. Don Hutto Center has survived two previous contract challenges

More of interview with CCA's Louise Grant

The T. Don Hutto blog reports here that the Williamson County, TX County Commissioners Court will meet at 9:15 a.m. this morning, and that residents will call for the termination of the County's contract allowing Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America to operate the T. Don Hutto family and child detention facility. See this story and its timeline for more information about the facility.

Residents have asked the County to terminate the CCA contract at least twice before, in part on the argument that the County is exposed to liability for what happens at Hutto, where the federal immigration agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") contracts with CCA to provide detention-related services. From the T. Don Hutto blog:

First, ICE's Family Residential Standards are based on policies used at adult prisons, making them an inappropriate model for the care of families. Second, these standards are not enforceable. That means that CCA and Williamson County can fall out of compliance with little legal recourse by families detained there. While this may be legally convenient for the contractors, it does not release them from the responsibility for the care and welfare of families at Hutto.

The Hutto facility has been under federal judicial supervision since federal litigation in 2007 led to a settlement between the ACLU and ICE, but that supervision will end in August. The conditions mandated by the settlement were summarized by the ACLU at the time:

Additional improvements ICE will be required to make as a result of the settlement include allowing children over the age of 12 to move freely about the facility; providing a full-time, on-site pediatrician; eliminating the count system so that families are not forced to stay in their cells 12 hours a day; installing privacy curtains around toilets; offering field trip opportunities to children; supplying more toys and age-and language-appropriate books; and improving the nutritional value of food. ICE must also allow regular legal orientation presentations by local immigrants' rights organizations; allow family and friends to visit Hutto detainees seven days a week; and allow children to keep paper and pens in their rooms. ICE's compliance with each of these reforms, as well as other conditions reforms, will be subject to external oversight to ensure their permanence.

When the liability issue arose in October 2007, CCA issued this statement, and a CCA attorney made the case to the County Commissioners that they were not only immune from liability but immune from suit (see video above).

One of the commissioners states in the video that ICE had indicated to the County at one time that "there is a monitoring system not working and you should have had it fixed," which was contrary to the commissioner's understanding that such a problem would be CCA's responsibility.

The Williamson County Commissioners Court has twice voted to continue the contract when asked to terminate it.

In an interview with HispanicNashville.com, CCA VP of Marketing and Communications Louise Grant praised the facility and the staff, noting that the children have written nice letters and that the staff has commented on the conditions at the facility being better than the conditions which some of the families have just left:

I know when I've been to that facility, and I have seen - I've walked in the classrooms, and there are murals painted on the wall of Disney characters, there are books in Spanish, and we have our Hispanic teachers, and the children - and I've seen, I have in my desk in drawers, I have letters that the children have written to the teachers, to the counselors, to the detention officers, saying things like, "Thank you for making me smile; you made me feel safe."

I know that having talked to our staff there, some of them even realize that, especially for those who were just brought over the border, who just came over the border, and now are detained at that facility, as opposed to any who have been in the country for a while, we've said they're getting more education, more recreation, healthier food, than they've probably had in their lifetime. And we do know that they are going to go back to their country of origin and you wonder what is the condition they will go back to, because we know how safe they are right now, in our facility. We know what opportunities they have for education, for recreation, high caloric content, and their ability to be with not only their family, but others, so that it truly is a community.

So while we're not debating public policy, we can say that as a company, we are extremely proud of the level of integrity in how we've managed that contract, and the quality of our staff, who every single day are coming in, and they are working diligently to ensure that those families are safe, that they are well treated, and they're getting medical care there that probably exceeds anything they've ever had in their lifetime.

At the time of the 2007 settlement, the ACLU stated that all of the 26 children represented by the ACLU and co-counsel had been released from Hutto. Six of the children were released days before the settlement was finalized, and were living with U.S. citizen and/or legal permanent resident family members while pursuing their asylum claims.

Labels: business, justice

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"Latinos aren't a recent addition to America. They are America."

Nationally syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette, author of A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano, wrote two recent columns (here and here) on the low-quality questioning of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, both inside and outside the Senate chamber. Here is an excerpt of last week's column, which focuses on the pundits:

It's been surreal to watch pundits ask whether Sotomayor can get along with people who don't look like her and handle the pressure of integrating an institution that lacks diversity.

They must be kidding. She's been doing that since she first stepped on a college campus nearly 40 years ago...

Read the rest of last week's column here.

In this week's column, Navarrette turns to the Senate:

Whatever it was that caused the Republicans' blind spot, it is obvious that they need a crash course in Latinos 101. It was painful to watch them willingly surrender any shred of credit that the GOP deserves for putting Sotomayor on the road to make history as the first Latina Supreme Court justice. It was a Republican president - George H.W. Bush - who nominated Sotomayor to the federal bench in 1991. If the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee were smart, they would have mentioned that fact over and over again to advance the notion that Republicans also at times open doors for women and minorities. Instead of playing up the idea of the GOP being a big tent, they advertised it as a restricted club.
...
All week I've been hearing from readers - including some who claimed to be conservatives - who said they were shocked at the ignorance that Republican senators showed during their questioning of Sotomayor. Some talked about having served in the military with Latinos or teaching them in public schools or working alongside them. And they all said that, as a result of that kind of exposure, they had come to realize that Latinos aren't a recent addition to America. They are America.

Read the rest of this week's column here.

For a free "Latino 101" keep reading HispanicNashville.com

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The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Youth Justice Group

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition youth justice group lobbied Congressman Cooper yesterday to support the Dream Act this year. The Dream Act is up to 84 co-sponsors in the U.S. House of Representatives (source: twitter.com/tnimmigrant).

As I described it to my own representatives, the Dream Act would set conditions by which legal status could be earned by dedicated youth who have no individual culpability for the fact that they don't have a visa. Eligible youth would demonstrate personal responsibility in the circumstances they can control, like their studies, in exchange for permission to work and get a higher education.

Further information is available from the Dream Act article on Wikipedia.

Photo credit: http://twitpic.com/afzy5

Labels: education, immigrants, justice

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52,000 potential Latino Tennessee voters in 2010

Plus: Phil Valentine's comments at Ibiza

The Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Tennessee (TNRNHA) is 40 members strong and wants to do at least two things: (1) engage fellow conservatives, and (2) grow the party with Hispanic voters.

Engage: we are U.S. citizen Hispanic Tennesseans, and (maybe) take it easy on the rhetoric

One idea TNRNHA President Raul Lopez says is long overdue is that Hispanics must engage high-profile conservatives such as radio host Phil Valentine, who "might generate ill-will to Americans, that happen to be Hispanic, as a by-product of their popular commentary on illegal immigration," according to Lopez. The TNRNHA invited Valentine to speak at an event held at local latin dance club Ibiza, and both The Tennessean and WPLN filed reports. (Valentine's summary of his comments at the Ibiza event are at the end of this article.)

It would appear, from Lopez's admission that "ill will" is generated among Hispanic Americans as a result of certain comments on illegal immigration, that his group is concerned about stemming that same ill will, and maybe not only by its stated strategy of undoing what it sees as public distortions of conservative figures. Could it be that the TNRNHA also wants to change the tone of the Republican party's stance on particularly Hispanic-sensitive political issues?

Take as an example the TNRNHA's statement on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor (H/T: Post Politics). The group didn't stray too far from some of the controversial GOP allegations of racism against the sitting federal appellate court judge, citing "the bias she will bring to the Supreme Court as a Latina woman," but the TNRNHA did eschew the specific word "racist" when describing Sotomayor and twice welcomed the concept of diversity on the nation's highest court.

There is also some evidence that the group intends to correct distortions of facts about Hispanics - for example, the kind of generalizations about legal status that led to the "ivory soap" comment by Maury County official Bob Farmer, who said that 99.99% of Hispanics are "here illegally." Lopez was quoted by WPLN as saying that he wants people to know there are many U.S. citizen and legal resident Hispanics in Tennessee. In fact, it is estimated that 75% of the Hispanics living in Tennessee fit into those citizen and legal resident categories.

Grow the party: 52,000 potential voters

The TNRNHA has 40 members now, according to the Tennessean, but the group sees its potential as much greater. From the Tennessean story:

The Tennessee Republican National Hispanic Assembly formed in April, said Raul Lopez, the group's Cuban-American chairman, and its membership stands at 40. But the figure he's looking at is 52,000 — an estimate of potential Latino voters next year.

TNRNHA Vice-Chair Juan Borges was quoted in a recent press release as saying, "The Hispanic vote is critical":

Right now we estimate that there are about 155,000 homes in Middle Tennessee that speak Spanish. We estimate that there are about 53,000 Latinos registered to vote. Out of those only about 9,500 have voted in the previous election.

"They are an untapped market and we're going to go get them. We're going to give them a place to belong and it's going to be the Republican National Hispanic Assembly."

Nationally: Republicans struggle for Hispanic audience

In June, the national chairman of the RNHA commented on the importance of Hispanic voters:

The Republican Party must recapture a material portion of the Hispanic vote or we will not win national elections in the future.

Jeb Bush, in a July interview with Tucker Carlson for Esquire, said that Republicans are

sending signals that Hispanics aren't wanted in our party

and that

the emotion, the anger, is a signal. ... It makes it sound like them and us.

In 2005, GOP author of Los Republicanos and former George W. Bush administration official Leslie Sanchez warned this would happen:

Ham-fisted attacks ... on illegal immigrants, while political red meat for some, cause many in our coalition -- particularly Hispanics and suburban women -- to recoil.

In Nashville in 2005, a conservative talk show host said that Governor Bredesen was not tuned in to the "animosity" on the "vibrant" issue of illegal immigration, describing this state of affairs as a political weakness of Bredesen to be exploited. In retrospect, the political weapon built on that animosity appears to have backfired, having reached a fever pitch in May 2006, marked by the now-famous "shoot him" punch line by Nashville talk show host Phil Valentine.

Phil Valentine speaks to the TNRNHA

Phil Valentine kindly summarized for HispanicNashville.com his comments at the recent TNRNHA event held at Ibiza. Here they are:

The basic theme of my talk was that I am not at all opposed to immigration. I believe orderly, legal immigration is still vital to the United States. I believe illegal immigrants do great damage to Hispanics in general because of the MS13 problem, jobs going to illegals, drunk driving deaths and murders committed by illegal aliens.

The legal Hispanic community must come together to help solve this problem. They cannot turn a blind eye or, worse, help harbor those who have broken into this country. The key to success is assimilation. Those who don't will never be successful in this country. That means a common language and a common heritage. There's nothing wrong with being proud of your heritage but placing that heritage above being American is unacceptable.

It's time to join together and solve this problem for the good of the country.

TNRNHA emphasizes cultural conservatism, defense, fiscal responsibility

When I asked Raul Lopez about his own comments at the Ibiza event, here is what he said:

Faith, Family, Freedom and Fiscal Responsibility.

We Republicans believe in the Sanctity of Life (We're the ONLY Party that backs it up in our platform)
We believe in the Sanctity of Marriage
We believe in empowering the family over the government (Less taxes, Less bureaucracy, Enhanced personal empowerment)
We believe in Secure Borders (The North, South, East, and West) to protect us from terrorism and any other threats to our Nation
We believe that everyone should not be judged by the color of their skin but rather by the content of their character (We don't believe in Racial Discrimination; even reverse Discrimination)
We believe that you can't spend your way to long lasting recovery and prosperity

Labels: justice, negativity, statistics

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Update below: How an ad for an "International Driver License" was pitched to me after posting this report.

There are at least two scams going around in Tennessee: one that targets the unvisaed immigrant, and one that targets Spanish-speakers.

"International drivers license" scam

When I was in Chile last month, my friends told me I should have gotten an "international drivers license" so if I got pulled over in my rental car, I wouldn't have any trouble with the local police. While there is such a thing as an international driving permit (the AAA and the NAC are the only authorized issuers for bearers of U.S. drivers licenses, according to the U.S. State Department), the term "international drivers license" is being used to sell worthless documents to unvisaed immigrants in Tennessee, according to the Commercial Appeal (h/t: Post Politics). The purpose of the scam, according to the article:

to fool the person who's buying the document, not the person they'll show it to

According to the Commercial Appeal article, the "international drivers license" vendors claim that their service offers a translation of valid foreign drivers licenses. According to the U.S. government, however, while holders of valid foreign drivers licenses can legally drive in the U.S. under an international driving permit, there are two important conditions:

• The document can only be used by foreigners traveling in the U.S., not foreigners residing here
  Source: Federal Trade Commission
• Application for the international driving permit has to be from outside the U.S.
  Source: USA.gov

Victims of the international drivers license scams are encouraged to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

Notaries impersonating lawyers

When someone registers as a notary public in Tennessee and offers legal services to Spanish-speakers under the title of "notario publico," that is a scam - because in Latin America, a notario publico is an attorney, but in Tennessee, a notary public is not. The scam takes advantage of the similarity of the two terms. From the Attorney General's office:

Attorney General Bob Cooper, on behalf of Mary Clement, the Director of the Division of Consumer Affairs, filed three settlements and two lawsuits today involving companies allegedly using misleading advertisements promoting themselves as a “notario publico” in Tennessee.

The Spanish translation of “notary public” is “notario publico,” or in the plural “notarios publicos.” In many Spanish-speaking countries, a notario publico is a civil-law notary, or an attorney who has been specially appointed to grant public faith to certain common, everyday transactions. As a result, consumers often believe these individuals and the related transactions involve a higher level of trust and accuracy.

Unfortunately, some businesses are targeting Spanish-speaking Tennessee residents by advertising themselves as “notarios publicos”, when they are merely offering notary public services. Under Tennessee law, a notary public who is not licensed to practice law in Tennessee and advertises their services as a notary public must include in all advertisements the following disclaimer in English and the language used in the ad: “I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY LICENSED TO PRACTICE LAW IN THE STATE OF TENNESSEE, AND I MAY NOT GIVE LEGAL ADVICE OR ACCEPT FEES FOR LEGAL ADVICE.”

“My office is concerned about any businesses misleading consumers,” Attorney General Cooper said. “We will continue to enforce the Notaries Public law to ensure that all consumers understand what they are purchasing.”

The State has entered settlements with Conny Diaz, individually and doing business as Diaz Servicio de Taxes, based in Northern Mississippi; Selvyn Amaya, individually and doing business as Servicios Publicos, Casa Taxes and Casa y Taxes, based in Nashville; and Julio Barillas, individually and doing business as Reembolsos Rapidos and JB Services, based in Memphis.

These businesses, which advertised in Tennessee without the required disclaimer, have agreed to modify their advertisements to comply with state law and to pay civil penalties and attorneys’ fees.

The State additionally filed lawsuits against the following individuals and companies: Juan Hernandez, individually and doing business as Centro Azteca, a Chattanooga company; and Edison Roman, individually and doing business as Oficina Internacional in Memphis.

The State’s lawsuits allege violations of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act for advertising as a “notario publico” without the required disclaimer. In addition, the complaint against Juan Hernandez, individually and doing business as Centro Azteca, alleges the company advertised as “abogados,” the Spanish word for “attorneys,” without any disclaimer. The State is seeking an injunction, restitution, civil penalties and attorneys’ fees in both lawsuits.

Director Clement warned consumers to be careful when choosing individuals to perform legal services. “I encourage Tennesseans in need of an attorney to confirm the attorney is in good standing and licensed to practice law in the state of Tennessee by contacting the Board of Professional Responsibility at (615) 361-7500 or going to the website at http://www.tbpr.org/,” she said.

To see a copy of the State’s filings, go to www.attorneygeneral.state.tn.us and then click on Office Information and Cases of Interest at http://www.tn.gov/attorneygeneral/cases/cases.htm.

Consumers who have complaints about any of the companies sued by the State or other individuals or businesses advertising as a “notario publico” without the required disclaimer or otherwise engaged in unfair or deceptive trade practices should contact the Division of Consumer Affairs at 1-800-342-8385 (toll-free inside Tennessee) or (615) 741-4737.

If you know of an individual or company that may be practicing law without a license, please file a complaint with this Office by downloading a complaint form from http://www.attorneygeneral.state.tn.us/cpro/upl.htm and mailing it back to this Office at:

Tennessee Attorney General's Office
Consumer Advocate and Protection Division
Attn: UPL Complaint
P.O. Box 20207
Nashville, TN 37202-0207

Edited to add: When I published this story, a 300x250 block ad was displayed in my Blogger.com dashboard, with the headline "GET YOUR INTERNATIONAL DRIVER LICENSE NOW!". It was not from the NAC or the AAA. I clicked over from the company's professional-looking ad to its professional-looking web site, and it claims to be in good standing with the Better Business Bureau. The "Legal Disclaimer" section says the following:

The information contained within this website is protected under the Article of the 1st Amendment [sic] to the United States Constitution and is not intended to contain legal advise [sic]. The primary function of this website is for educational [sic] on a translation document and nothing within should be construed as legal advice.

The "Conditions" that appear in the online application page are as follows:

I pledge to follow all city, state, federal & international traffic regulations required by law. I acknowledge that I may not drive anywhere without a valid driver's license. I will obey all of the rules and regulations of the UN Conference on Road Traffic in [sic] 1923, 1943, 1949 and 1968. I acknowledge that this document is a driver license translation and is valid only with a driver license. I hereby certify that my driver license is currently valid and is not suspended or revoked.

[checkbox] I accept this [sic] conditions

Graphically, the advertiser's site is much more impressive than the AAA and NAC sites. But for a service touting translation as its primary function, however, you have to wonder. Maybe the legal disclaimers and conditions and the company's use of the term "international drivers license" mean that the company admits that its document does not constitute an international driving permit. Notice how they phrase the first bullet point on the front page of their web site, without actually saying that the document entitles the bearer to legally drive in the U.S.:

Drive a car in almost any place in the world!. [sic]

I wonder what their response would be to the allegation that their document is "worthless" or a "scam." From the pictures, the product looks like a very pretty translation of whatever information the applicant submits to the company online or via mail. Whether the product purports to be more, and is not, is the scam question.

It comes in the form of a small card, bearing the consumer's photo and identifying information, with the title "International Driver Document" in English, "Licencia de Conducir Internacional" in Spanish, and "Permis de Conduire International" in French.

Photo by Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier. Licensed under Creative Commons.

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Labels: comic, immigrants, justice

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Movie and protest bring Hutto to forefront this month

CCA: "We are not in the business of making moral decisions on U.S. public policy"

"We said no initially"

There's a new movie out - and also a protest later this month - about the federal government's detention of children at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center ("Hutto"), which is operated by Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America ("CCA").

The movie is called The Least of These and will be screened at the Capitol in Washington D.C. tomorrow. [Update 6/10/2009: The Least of These can be previewed on YouTube, viewed in full for free at SnagFilms, and is also available on DVD. Details at www.theleastofthese-film.com]

The protest is scheduled for June 20, the third consecutive World Refugee Day on which a protest will be held at Hutto.

Overview of child detention controversy and Hutto facility

The complaints against Hutto center around these two issues: (1) whether the federal government (and its contractors like CCA) should be detaining children at all, and (2) if so, under what conditions should children be detained.

In regard to the first issue - whether children should be detained at all - everyone agrees on one point: families should not be separated. The question is how to keep track of them once a parent has been apprehended by immigration authorities. The federal government argues that keeping track of families requires detention of parents along with their children. Opponents argue that families can be successfully monitored through methods other than detention.

In regard to the second issue - if children are to be detained, under what conditions - was the subject of a federal lawsuit brought by the ACLU in 2006, which resulted in a settlement. After the judge ruled that ACLU was highly likely to succeed, the federal government agreed to specific changes, and the Hutto facility was subjected to monitoring by a court magistrate through 2009. No violations of that settlement have been reported.

Opponents of child detention in general have targeted at least three entities:

• the federal government;
• Williamson County, Texas, where Hutto is located; and
• Corrections Corporation of America, based in Nashville, which operates Hutto.

The decision about whether to detain children, or participate in their detention, is made by all three: Uncle Sam, Williamson County commissioners and their constituents, and CCA and its constituents.

Because of CCA's role, it is one of the targets of the anti-Hutto protests. Prior to Hutto, however, CCA was seen as friendly to Hispanics and Latin Americans, who make up the majority of those held at Hutto. The company...

• ...boasts Donna Alvarado among its directors;
  
• ...has a history of contributions to the League of United Latin American Citizens;
  
• ...has been praised for its cooperation with the Mexican government to provide a Mexican GED program to prisoners from that country; and
  
• ...was even fined in February 2007 for hiring too many Hispanic employees.

Because of Hutto, however, LULAC is returning the CCA donations it has received.

Comments by Louise Grant of CCA

The Hispanic Nashville Notebook asked CCA how the company views the detention of children and families, or allegations of overincarceration - and whether the board or the company wrestles with the moral issues raised by opponents, or whether there is a limit to the kind of policies the company is willing to help implement. Here is the response of CCA VP of Marketing and Communications Louise Grant:

Our government customers don't ask us our opinions on the moral implications. ... They make public policy decisions. ... Once those decisions have been made, they decide "Is the public government sector going to manage these individuals, or is the private sector?" ... We are not in the business of making moral decisions on U.S. public policy. ... Where we can have an influence is in our own facilities.

When describing the moment when ICE approached CCA to turn Hutto into a family facility, Grant said that CCA initially turned the government down:

Grant: Specifically in regard to Hutto, I can say our customer - Immigration and Customs Enforcement, again, they have been our customer for 25 years, they trust us - they came to us and asked us to operate a family detention center. We said no initially.

Hispanic Nashville Notebook: Why was that?

Grant: We said we have not had that expertise before - you know, we've managed adults. We've had a few juvenile facilities, but we have not managed a family detention center. Obviously, there was only one at the time in the country, in Pennsylvania, and we said no. And ICE came back to us and said, we've made the public policy decision that we are going to do this, and we want to partner who we trust; you've been a good partner for 25 years; we know you have high standards, you have integrity and strong ethics, and we would like you to do this. And we knew it was going to be an evolutionary process, because it was new for ICE and it was new for us, but we said OK we will do this. And we knew that there would be scrutiny. There was obviously the concern about safety and security to say, how can we ensure the absolute safest, most humane environment for these individuals. And our staff, who already goes through very rigorous training, went through a great deal more specialized training, and all of our counselors. And it has been an evolutionary process.

I've been to that facility several times. The warden Evelyn Hernandez is a wonderful woman from Puerto Rico who has the greatest sensitivity, and her staff has the greatest sensitivity to the mothers and the children and the fathers. We do believe that keeping those children with their families is something we're proud of. Again, we've worked extremely hard not to get involved in the public policy decisions...

Hutto Timeline

July 2005
CCA issues press release announcing Hutto closure

December 2005
CCA announces agreement with ICE that will keep Hutto open

May 2006
Hutto re-opens as facility for families, including children; Tennessean reports that federal immigration policy of family detention helps company's bottom line

December 2006
Protest against housing children at Hutto
BBCmundo.com covers Hutto controversy

January 2007
Texas Civil Rights Project says Hutto children not getting schooling required by Texas state law
ICE releases residential standards, mentions Hutto

February 2007
First media tour of Hutto
Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children issues a report condemning certain conditions at Hutto


February 2007 photos of HuttoMarch 2007
CCA makes statement to Congress about how good Hutto is
Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children makes statement to Congress about its concerns

April 2007
ICE describes good conditions at Hutto
Federal judge rules that ACLU is "highly likely to prevail" in its litigation alleging that ICE has abused its discretion because conditions of child detention at Hutto are not in compliance with federal law
Alibi.com interview with ACLU-TX legal director (H/T Aunt B)

May 2007
U.N. inspector Jorge Bustamante is turned away from scheduled inspection at Hutto
U.S. says Bustamante turned away because of pending litigation with ACLU
Bustamante issues statement
Bustamante's full report
Salon.com writes Hutto story called "Kiddie prisons"

June 2007
Houston Chronicle blog says Hutto will never be appropriate place for children
Amnesty International urges DHS not to detain children in advance of World Refugee Day rally at Hutto

August 2007
ICE settles with ACLU over conditions at Hutto
Text of the settlement agreement
CCA says that reforms were not the result of litigation - development process "still ongoing"

October 2007
Williamson County TX officials start planning termination of Hutto contract with CCA due to liability concerns

December 2007
Movie release: T. Don Hutto: America's Family Prison
Another Hutto protest

March 2008
New Yorker story: "Lost Children"
U.S. responds to U.N. report on Hutto:
ACLU says conditions at Hutto are "greatly improved"

April 2008
ICE says Hutto is a model; ACLU wants no more children in prison

June 2008
World Refugee Day vigil at Hutto ("to protest the use of Hutto, a former prison, to detain migrants and asylum seekers, including families with children")

Nashville Scene cover story on CCA and Hutto ("Locked and Loaded")

July 2008
Davidson County Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman rules CCA is subject to TN open records law

August 2008
CCA launches "CCA360" PR site (with a section on children at Hutto)
Matt Pulle at Nashville Scene blogs about CCA360; CCA VP of Marketing and Communications Louise Grant responds in comments and also publishes a reply post on CCA360

December 2008
Williamson County, TX votes 4-1 to renew Hutto contract
Dissenting Commissioner Birkman: "It's still a prison"
Commissioner Covey: "I haven't seen any of the things you [opponents] are talking about that endanger a child's life, because if there was, I'd be out of it"

January 2009
Austin Chronicle: "Lipstick on a Doberman"

February 2009
American Prospect: The Big Business of Family Detention
ImpactNews.com says no violations of the settlement agreement have been reported; runs down Williamson County's role

March 2009
The Economist blogs Hutto and Least of These documentary (H/T T. Don Hutto blog)
AP story on Least of These documentary
Austinist interview with Least of These Directors/Producers ("We chose not to interview CCA officials because we chose to focus the film narrowly on the issue of family detention and not on the failings of CCA...")

April 2009
Bill against family detention introduced in Texas legislature, names CCA
Houston's El Dia coverage on Hutto (H/T T. Don Hutto blog)
Business of Detention gets Webby nod (H/T T. Don Hutto blog)
Father John Rausch of Stanton, KY speaks out against child detention (H/T T. Don Hutto blog)

May 2009
Maryland immigration attorney on Least of These (condemning U.S. but not CCA)

June 2009
CCA donates to LULAC - which has had favorable opinions of CCA in the past - but LULAC is returning CCA donations now because of Hutto
June 20 vigil at Hutto for World Refugee Day

Thanks to Louise Grant of CCA for the interview.

Labels: business, events, immigrants, justice

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The announcement from the Coalition for Education about Immigration:

CEI PRESS CONFERENCE ON IMMIGRATION REFORM

Monday, June 1
Loews Vanderbilt Hotel
11:30 - 12:30
Mezzanine Level

CEI Members ...

At this morning's CEI meeting we decided to become a partner in a national effort called Reform Immigration for America. The mission of this national coalition is very similar to ours ... to educate the public on immigration issues and support comprehensive reform of our broken immigration system.

As you likely know already, President Obama is moving forward with addressing how to repair our immigration system through reform. To this end he is scheduled to begin conversations with Congress in the week ahead. Members organizations of this newly formed national coalition are simultaneously holding news conferences around the country on Monday to emphasize the need for reform and support the President's efforts. We decided this morning that we would do the same.

I know that this is short notice ... but am hoping that some of you will be able to join us on Monday at Loews. We have lined up several speakers who will give short addresses from different perspectives ... business, labor, religious, public policy, etc. The conference will be centered around CEI's statement of principles for reform that we collaboratively developed and adopted a couple of years ago and have honed since. We are hoping to have a large enough presence of members to demonstrate our commitment as well as have CEI members available to talk to guests and press who join us. Given the importance of this, whether or not you have been at a recent meeting of CEI, I am hoping you will give strong consideration to joining us on Monday. Hope to see you then.

CEI's principles for reform can be found on its web site:

CEI supports:

The development of opportunities to allow hard-working immigrants who are already contributing to this country to come out of the shadows, regularize their status after satisfying reasonable criteria, and over time, pursue and option to become lawful permanent residents, and eventually, United States citizens, if they choose to do so.
Reforms in our family-based immigration system that honor humanitarian and American family values and significantly reduce waiting times for reuniting families in the United States, something that can take years, even decades under the current process.
The development of legal avenues for new immigrant workers and their families who wish to migrate to the United States as well as the implementation of a safe, legal, and orderly process in which the rights of all workers are fully protected.

Effective border protection policies that are consistent with American humanitarian values and with the need to treat all individuals with respect. These policies will allow for critical and legitimate tasks of identifying and preventing entry into the United States by terrorists and dangerous criminals, implementing immigration policy, and maintaining the integrity of national borders.

The complete principles adopted by the Reform Immigration for America campaign are here.

Labels: events, immigrants, justice

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"A key ingredient to our nation’s greatness is the contribution of the Mexican American community"

From TNGOP.org (hat tip: Post Politics):

The Tennessee Republican Party joins Mexican Americans today in celebrating their heritage on Cinco de Mayo.

“A key ingredient to our nation’s greatness is the contribution of the Mexican American community. Our shared values of family, freedom to pursue opportunity and observance of our faith are the cornerstones of Hispanic citizens and all ethnicities,” noted Robin Smith, Chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. “Today, we reaffirm the commitment of our Republican Party to the policies that work to provide jobs, educational opportunity, access to health care, the ownership of private property and all others that emphasize personal achievement, not government interference or entitlement.”

Tennessee enjoys the leadership of the TN Republican National Hispanic Assembly that continues to grow and represent key issues. The organization’s beliefs are clearly stated at their website, www.tnrnha.org/i_am_a_republican.htm.

Raul Lopez, Chairman of the TN Republican National Hispanic Assembly, declared, “We have all come to the greatest country in the world for the opportunity to worship without government restriction; for our families to pursue happiness without government bondage and domination; and to express ourselves freely without fear. We can’t take these blessings for granted and must fight as our forefathers to keep our citizens free.

Juan Borges, Vice Chairman of the TNRNHA, encourages interested citizens to get involved at www.tnrnha.org.

Labels: justice, mexico

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Made in L.A.
May 1 is a day in which immigrants have mobilized themselves in the past few years, and 2009 is no exception, but Nashville seems to be taking a pass this year (see the lists here, here and here of May 1 events across the country, none of which is in Nashville).

The only thing I've seen from the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition has been the following e-mail a few days ago, which includes instructions for getting May 1 updates from a national group:

* CALL: President Obama and thank him for moving immigration reform in 2009.
o For English call: 866-584-3962.
o Para Español: 866-583-2908.
* FAX: Senator Reid and Senator Pelosi to tell them to stand strong with President Obama and pass immigration reform in 2009. JUST CLICK THIS LINK: http://www.AmericasVoiceOnline.org/Leadership
* TEXT: Join the FIRM Mobile Action Network by texting Justice [Justicia for Spanish] to 69866 to get updates on May 1st actions and future action alerts to help us win immigration reform this year. [all standard text messaging fees apply]

As far as I can tell, the only campaign-level May 1 action item for Nashvillians would be to set up a screening of Made in L.A.:

Between April 15th and May 31st national organizations, grassroots groups, faith-based congregations and individuals across the country are coming together in a nationwide effort to share Emmy-winning Made in L.A. and put a human face on the issues of immigration, immigrant workers' rights, and supporting humane immigration reform. To learn more about the campaign, and see our short web-videos, visit our May Day Community Screening Campaign page!

Join the movement and start planning your own Made in L.A. event today!

Is there a Nashville May 1 event I'm missing? Does anyone know if there are any Made in L.A. screenings in the works for Nashville? Anyone want to put one together? Contact me here or comment below.

Labels: events, immigrants, justice

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State Representative John Litz: "Every Hispanic that you see out here on the street is not an illegal alien. We’ve got to get past that."

75% of Hispanic Tennesseans are either U.S. citizens or legal immigrants

The Kingsport Times-News reported here on a TV appearance of their state Representative John Litz, and his defense of local Hispanics*.

Representative Litz commented that "Every Hispanic that you see out here on the street is not an illegal alien. We’ve got to get past that. If we don’t, we’re breeding racism."

Litz is right. Roughly 75% of Hispanic Tennesseans are either U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. (About half of Tennessee's Hispanic population was born in the U.S., and among Hispanics in America who are foreign-born, about half have valid visas.)

The Times-News article points to a recent New York Times feature on the economy's impact on immigrant and non-immigrant workers in Hamblen County:

The faithful stand and hold their hands high, raising a crescendo of prayer for abundance and grace. In the evangelical church where they are gathered, the folding chairs are filled with immigrants from Latin America.
...
The 1960 census did not record a single immigrant in Hamblen County, of which Morristown is the seat. By 2007, Hispanic immigrants and their families made up almost 10 percent of the county population of 61,829, having nearly doubled their numbers since 2000, census data show.

Read the article in its entirety, complete with graphs and an audio slideshow, here.

*Aunt B. questions the Times-News' use of the word "local" in a way that doesn't include Hamblen County's local Hispanic residents.

Photo by Rakka. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: justice, statistics

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Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Tennessee event to feature 2010 gubernatorial candidate and current Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey

The Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Tennessee (TNRNHA) will hold a $100/ticket fundraiser April 30 at La Hacienda restaurant in Franklin. The scheduled topics are recruitment of Hispanics into the Republican Party, the Latino vote, and the 2010 elections.

For more background on TNRNHA, see these earlier stories about the group's formation and its (discontinued) YouTube series.

TNRNHA's web site is primarily in English, but it is not in English only - see the bilingual I Am a Republican Because page. There is also a a link to the RNC's Spanish-language site.

The TNRNHA Issues/Advocacy page focuses exclusively on one issue: free trade. The web site does not contain the words "immigrant" or "immigration".

Here is the April 30 event announcement on the Davidson County GOP web site:

You Are Cordially Invited to Attend A Special Private Event to Benefit the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of TN

Join Us and
Special Guest Speaker
Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey

Host Committee
Owner of La Hacienda Salvador Guzman
State Representative Glen Casada
State Senator Jack Johnson
Dr. David and Vicky Watts
Owner of Ambrose Printing John Ambrose
State Executive Committee Member Nathan R. James

As we discuss strategies to recruit Hispanics into the Republican Party and the importance of the Latino votes in TN

As we look to the Future for many Victories in 2010

Thursday, April 30, 2009
6:00pm
La Hacienda Mexican Restaurant
509 Hillsboro Rd
Franklin, TN. 37064
$100.00 per person/per couple

Space is Limited – Please RSVP via email to Mr. Juan Borges

H/T: In Session, via Post Politics

Labels: english, events, justice, spanish

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Slaverymap.org builds on the information we already had about this Nashville case.

Labels: immigrants, justice

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State Rep. Eric Watson may have said españols, but "yellow" tale is more interesting

There was a brouhaha yesterday about a recent comment by State Rep. Eric Watson, who supposedly used the word "Hispaniels" to describe Hispanics while expressing his opposition to a bill which would express regret to African-Americans for the wrongs of slavery. See posts and comments at the blogs: Pith in the Wind, Tiny Cat Pants, and Post Politics.

I think Rep. Watson said españols, that it wasn't a slur against Hispanics, and that it isn't even the most interesting part of this story.

An investigation

This little investigation got started when I called Rep. Watson's office for comment after I first heard about this. The word "Hispaniel" looked so odd that I had to get the Representative's side of the story before posting a reference to it on HispanicNashville.com, especially if there was any danger of Watson's appearing on the list of prominent Tennessee officials who have circulated negativity about Hispanics.

Watson's legislative assistant Marianne Purcell spoke with me first. She said that Rep. Watson recalled saying, "español," and that afterwards he (maybe rhetorically) had asked something like, "That's a word, isn't it?" (Commenter "nm" over at Tiny Cat Pants seemed to be the only one to guess this possibility on the blogs yesterday; I'll admit, I hadn't thought of it, either.)

I mentioned to Purcell that Rep. Watson appeared to have used the term - if it was "español" - as a noun to describe a group of people, and neither she nor I knew what to make of that. Since I mentioned that the blog posts and comments referenced above didn't have any link to any audio, Purcell proceeded to look up the video on the Legislature's web site while we were speaking (you can, too: go to Tennessee General Assembly Streaming Video > State & Local Government > April 7, 2009 > Video). Keep in mind that I'm not a constituent of Mr. Watson, and this was after 5pm, so as far as I was concerned, Purcell went way above and beyond to help me out by scrolling video for me over the phone in real time. She even kept a nice attitude about it. (Lesson to Republicans: if you want to give government a bad name, you're going to have to hide nice people like Marianne Purcell.)

So here we are, Purcell looking for the audio while we're on the phone and me trying to do the same. At one moment Purcell runs across the audio of Rep. Watson's referring to different races and then mentioning "Mexicans" apparently as an example of one of the races. I could hear it on her speakers, and we both remarked that it was clearly "Mexicans" and not "Hispaniels," so we assumed there was another portion of his comments we were looking for with the "Hispaniels"-sounding remark. Apparently Rep. Watson either came in the office or was in the office already when the "Mexicans" part of the audio came on, because Purcell said she rolled her eyes at (or did something else similarly and mildly admonishing to Watson, I forget exactly what) when "Mexicans" came across the speakers. I thought it was at least a good sign that Watson's legislative assistant recognized the impropriety of using the term "Mexicans" as a general descriptor, especially when referring either to race or to multiple possible countries. (I told her she might enjoy the beer commercial from a few posts back here on HispanicNashville.com, about the guy at the bar who meets four women who say they're from different countries in South America, after which the man asks the bartender for drinks for "my four Mexican friends.")

Then Purcell handed the phone to Watson, to my surprise. I told him that he and I both grew up Baptist and were born in 1973 - he said he liked that - and then he basically repeated what Purcell had told me, that he had said "español" and not "Hispaniel." Unfortunately, without the audio yet of what he actually said, I wasn't able to ask any useful questions. In any case, I thought it courteous of the Representative to take the time to speak with me, and he left the door open for follow-up if needed.

Then Purcell was back on the line, and she said she'd keep looking for the supposed "Hispaniel" comment and send me a link to it. A few minutes later, she referred me to the 18:46 mark of the video on the Legislature's site.

With the video in hand, and giving Watson the benefit of the doubt on "español," I come up with a transcript that looks like this:

Rep. Watson: "You know, we need to move on and put this stuff behind us. Both sides - Caucasian, Españols, African-American - are all guilty of this back in the 1800's. You've read it and so have I. Even the yellow man, if you look back in the 1820's in Sumterville..."

Rep. Gilmore (bill sponsor): "Mm-hmm" [Affirmative mumble]

Rep. Watson: "...even here close by, the yellow man, which is the white man, was [?] slavery too. I understand what you're doing, I just don't want you to be accused of [?] profiling or going towards a certain group of people on this bill. But I could support this bill if you could include all the slavery, not just one race, because there was more than just the African-American that was [en]slaved, back in the 1800's, if you do your - you know, look into the history. Would you entertain that?

Rep. Gilmore (bill sponsor): Well, let me just -

Rep. Watson: The Spanish people, I'm talking about Chine- even Chinese.

And here's the comment about the Mexicans:

Rep. Watson: So you would not agree with putting all races that was involved, correct? You don't want to do your resolution including everybody that's been involved in slavery, no matter what their race is.

Rep. Gilmore: Explain a little bit more about what you mean by that, Representative Watson.

Rep. Watson: Well, what I mean is-

Rep. Gilmore: Because I know that Indians-

Rep. Watson: Yeah-

Rep. Gilmore: -by [?] large, have, okay, but the others were in such small numbers, I'm not sure if I understand what we're saying here.

Rep. Watson: What I'm saying is let's do a House [?] Resolution for everybody - I mean everybody, even for the Indians, the Mexicans that has been involved in slavery, for everybody, let's do this for everybody not for just a certain group of people. I know you don't want us to be accused of profiling, and I don't either. But let's do this for everybody and be fair across the board all I'm saying.

Rep. Gilmore: I'd like to try to pass it as it is, Representative Watson.

Rep. Watson: Okay.

Rep. Gilmore: Again, I [?] want to minimize slavery for anyone, because enslaving anybody is wrong.

Rep. Watson: Yes, it is.

Rep. Gilmore: The numbers of other races I think sometime were small in comparison.

Rep. Watson: Okay.

The exchange ended in Rep. Gilmore saying to Rep. Watson, "I appreciate you."

Did anyone catch that Rep. Gilmore responded in the affirmative to the "yellow man" reference? I want to get back to that below; it turns out this detail (missing from the Scene's transcription) is a crucial clue.

Back to españols as a noun, I couldn't find too many references to the word or that usage online, but this Filipino blog post from 2008 uses the word españols in exactly the same context as Watson, describing those who were guilty of slavery:

It was the same scenario when this español took their boats to the Americans and let their swords glitter in the face of the Aztecs. Correct me if I’m wrong. What I am writing is based on stock knowledge alone. When the Spanish conquistadors set their foot on the South America, we all knew that the Aztec culture was doomed. The continual conquest for gun, God and glory ‘gave’ the españols license to almost wipe out an entire civilization. And you must say, they did succeed — nearly killing the whole population and turning the remainder to slaves.

(I'll leave it to the rest of you to snark about the continual contest for gun, God and glory in modern politics.)

The Scene, by the way, not looking for the term españols, found the term "hispaniels" used negatively in a random blog post from 2006, but it's not used in the slavery context. As between the neutral and historical usage of the Filipino post and the negative usage cited by the Scene, the neutral and historical usage is the closest.

It would seem that Watson is calling the oppressors the españols and calling the oppressed "Mexicans." That could be harmless.

To the extent that Watson mentions race in his remarks, it might be worth it for him to note later that the concept of race would include neither the españols, Mexicans, or even Hispanics for that matter. As has been discussed on Kleinheider's blog and Tiny Cat Pants multiple times over the years, Hispanic is not a race - it is an ethnicity.

Yellow man

Let's get back to the yellow man. Rep. Gilmore indicated that she knew what Rep. Watson was talking about when he referred to the "yellow man." What could this be, that she knows what he's talking about? Is it common Tennessee knowledge? Is it a story that was shared in the halls of Legislative Plaza last week? The latter seems more likely.

I searched for "yellow man" and Sumterville (Sumterville is the missing detail from the Scene transcript), and the results show that the "yellow man" reference is part of the story of William Ellison, a former slave who became a slaveowner, described in the book Black Masters as "a man of mixed white and black ancestry."

(An aside: So is Rep. Watson citing an example of a mixed-race slaveowner to discredit a bill that honors African-Americans by expressing regret for their enslavement? That would be interesting, because Watson also quoted our mixed-race president multiple times for the proposition that apologies for slavery are inappropriate (hence Rep. Gilmore's preference for the concept of regret and not apology)).

Where things get interesting is if you look for the "yellow man" reference outside the context of the Black Masters book. The term "yellow man" in regard to slavery appears most commonly on the Internet in an article attributed to Robert M. Grooms from the October 1995 edition of The Barnes Review, which Wikipedia says is "dedicated to historical revisionism such as Holocaust denial." The Grooms article ("Dixie's Censored Subject: Black Slaveowners") has been making the rounds in theoretically harmless places like web sites for gun owners, Corvette owners, terrorism/security subjects, and Civil War history, but it's also been showing up in some scary places, as well - including one with the words "jew" and "white" showing up numerous times.

Oh, yeah, and freerepublic.com, too (BlueDogCatcher, you saw this coming).

Which is not to say that by association Rep. Watson is necessarily a gun or Corvette owner, terrorism/security news fan, Civil War buff, or freeper or much, much, worse. But odds are that those folks are where Watson got the argument he used last week to oppose the anti-slavery resolution.

Conclusion

The bad taste in my mouth is not so much from the español comment, which after all isn't the greatest evidence in the world for an argument that Rep. Watson employed a slur against Hispanics. "Yellow man," also, isn't convincing as a slur, either, given the Grooms story.

It's just that the sentiment in the places where the "yellow man" reference appears on the Internet is so dark - and, despite that negativity, a reference to the "yellow man" still makes it into committee remarks by one of our State legislators. That, and the dubious refusal of the majority to acknowledge the oppression of a certain minority - on the grounds of fairness, no less.

Espanol Photo by Thomas Hawk. Licensed under Creative Commons.
Yellow Man Photo by Jean-François Bauche. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: history, justice, negativity

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HB0808 would close universities' doors to Tennessee students

Students without visas flourish with the responsibilities they can control

Hearing tomorrow in Higher Education Subcommittee

TimesNews.net (h/t Post Politics) reports that MTSU professor Laura Blackwell Clark has told state lawmakers that a bill to withhold college from good but unvisaed students is bad for the community at large:

"We allow (non-citizen) people to go to public institutions if they pay out-of-state tuition," Laura Blackwell Clark, assistant professor of Educational Leadership at Middle Tennessee State University, told the subcommittee. "This bill is seeking to close the door to the opportunity for a person who is undocumented to attend a public institution of higher learning. … I’m asking you to think about this and to not support this bill. My belief is when we block educational access to any of the residents, any citizens, any non-citizens, any people who are part of our American community, we do our community a disservice in the long term."

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights position on the bill is here. The bill, HB0808, will be on the calendar of the House Higher Education Subcommittee on Tuesday.

Students without visas flourish with the responsibilities they can control

Tennessee's visaless high schoolers are still achieving success, despite the barriers set up against employment after graduation (see this story). As I've said before, any proposal to blockade high performers from college altogether echoes of the doomsday clock and the misery strategy. Even if one fully considers both concepts and embraces them as "sticks" to use against parents, supporting HB0808 and opposing legal status for good students requires being comfortable offering no "carrot" to the kids for their good behavior here.

Students who have gone on to college without visas - a population that exists in many places including Tennessee, at least currently - are interviewed in the video below. We have the choice of designing a system that moves them backward in society (the misery strategy) or one that recognizes that through their success they should earn something better than a dead end:

Click here to act

If you would like to take action on this issue, try one of the following:

• Contact your state legislator to ask them to oppose (or thank them for opposing) HB0808, which would close the door of Tennessee's universities even for visaless students who would pay out-of-state tuition on their own dime.
• Do one of the following below to support the DREAM Act, which would allow good students to get on a path to legal status: call, fax, or e-mail your federal legislator, and text here to get updates. (H/T: Change.org)

One final word on the DREAM Act - President Obama's statement about it during the campaign:

Labels: education, immigrants, justice

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"There could hardly be two less controversial issues within the German community than the Sunday drinking law and increased immigration"

"By 'foreigners,' Brownlow meant Greeks and Arabs and the like. He never said anything against the Germans. They are his best friends."

Drivers license written exam bill up tonight in Senate

Fights about laws governing alcohol have a long history. Today, the fight is about wine sales in supermarkets. Back in the day, laws restricted drinking on Sunday, and Tennessee's German immigrant community aimed to set aside its differences to lobby for more liberal drinking laws:

German Radicals and German Conservatives had been so hostile towards one another that they had been unwilling to even temporarily lay aside their personal differences to work toward a common goal. ... Although the Staatszeitung actively supported the Republican party, [Publisher John] Ruhm still felt it was necessary for the Germans to band together to lobby for legislation that directly affected them as an ethnic minority. Ruhm believed that the proper vehicle had finally arrived with the establishment of the new German Association. As far as he was concerned, there could hardly be two less controversial issues within the German community than the Sunday drinking law and increased immigration.

Speaking of German, the Tennessee Senate is scheduled to hear a measure today that would limit the number of languages in which the state's written drivers license exam is given (h/t: Post Politics). Interestingly, at the same time as the bill would prohibit the Department of Safety from adding new languages beyond the currently used Japanese, Korean and Spanish, an amendment passed that explicitly expanded the list to include German.

This favoritism toward German is easily explained - Germany's Volkswagen just announced a major investment in a new manufacturing facility in Chattanooga. It also recalls a different differentiation among immigrants that the Tennessee Staatszeitung seemed to deem acceptable in the 19th century, referring to then-governor Brownlow:

I heard a Conservative German yesterday sharply criticize Brownlow's Knownothing past. A bystander asked, what have the Germans always got against Brownlow? Did he ever insult the Germans like Etheridge who once spoke of "a pack of dirty dutchmen," and on another occasion spoke of "d-----d dutch intruders"? No, Brownlow has never criticized the Germans. True, he has reviled foreigners, he has expressed the opinion that it would be better if they were to drown on the other side of the Atlantic, and so on. But by foreigners, Brownlow meant Greeks and Arabs and the like. He never said anything against the Germans. They are his best friends.

The Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition has talking points on the Senate's drivers license bill and other proposals affecting immigrants here.

This story is the fourth in a series about the history of the Tennessee Staatszeitung newspaper and German history here (click the following links for the first, second, and third installments in the series).

Photo by justin. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: german, immigrants, justice

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Country music legend and junior Representative team up to reframe immigrant laws

Today is New American Day on the Hill

Country music legend William Walker and House Rep. James LaFleur have joined up to co-author legislation that is somewhat atypical of the way state lawmakers have approached immigrants and their immigration status in recent years. Walker's and LaFleur's request to extend the legislative filing deadline is on the agenda of the Rules and Sense committee at 10:00 a.m. today, which meets in Legislative Plaza Room 19-74.

The legislative package, dubbed "The Appalachian Ellis Island" by its growing number of supporters, features the following proposals:

• A specialty license plate for the "Appalachian Ellis Island" slogan. The image will be designed by contest. The additional $70 fee will be waived because Walker is assigning the profits from his "Gone Back on Your Raisin" tour to the Department of Transportation.
• In-state tuition for every resident of Tennessee, period. "I have more horse sense than book sense," said Walker, "but it seems to me when the National Merit Scholar who's lived next door to me for ten years and the Valedictorian across the street from Rep. La Fleur who's lived there for seven years come knocking on MTSU's and UT's doorsteps, respectively, there's no other appropriate response than, "Ain't that the berries!"
• Drivers' licenses regardless of legal status. LaFleur said that any legislator opposing this proposal should be forced to put this bumper sticker on his or her car: "I was the one who took away the car insurance from that uninsured driver who hit you." LaFleur said he is also troubled by the fact that law enforcement is sometimes unable to identify people because of the unavailability of identification.
• A one-year statute of limitations for any state or local treatment or processing of a person due to federal immigration status. Walker said, "I've done a lot of bad things in my life, but as long as I'm not a murderer, the government can't chase me forever. Why should working without a visa on the Nashville Symphony's building be punishable for a coon's age when the folks who pirate their CDs and download their world-famous music for free are off the hook before the ink has dried on the hard drive?" In a rare moment of disagreement with Walker, LaFleur said, "He**, are we asking the metermaids to enforce tax laws now? Why are we even talking about this? Make the statute of limitations 1 day and then at least you'll be chronologically closer to understanding the supremacy clause."
• Increased funding for state employment law enforcement. "This is a no-brainer," says LaFleur. "If you go after everyone who's taking shortcuts with employees, you'll be busy as a stump-tailed cow in fly time, but at least you'll be shaping up the employers for the benefit of every employee in Tennessee." Walker added, "I could have used this when I was waiting tables before I signed with the label - and probably after, too."
• A moratorium on local government proposals targeting immigrants as a class. LaFleur explained the proposal, telling the Hispanic Nashville Notebook, "We say we're accepting of legal immigrants, but the number of pro-immigrant laws and resolutions out there are as scarce as hen's teeth."
• Adjusting state funds downward for any locality that uses 287(g) to go beyond dangerous criminals. LaFleur said, "If you have such an abundance of resources that you can process and house people for piddly stuff, let's have another look at how much of the state's money heads your way."
• A multilingual resolution to be translated into every language currently spoken in Tennessee, as determined by the U.S. census. The resolution would read, "You're welcome here. When you saw the 'welcome' sign on the highway or at the airport, we meant it, and we'll tell you in your own language, too." The Tennessee Historical Awareness Society will create a web site and brochures containing the resolution, to be illustrated with historic images from the immigrant communities in Tennessee's past and the printed communications they had in other languages besides English.
• Required time sitting in the dunking booth at Oktoberfest, Celebration of Cultures, or the Australian Festival for anyone who votes against the above measures.

If you've read this far, Happy April Fool's Day.

The real news is that today is New American Day on the Hill, a lobbying effort of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC).

TIRRC details the current Tennessee legislative session's negative immigrant-related proposals here. TIRRC supports these positive bills.

Photo by Joey Rozier. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: immigrants, justice

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Group gone from Nashville, maybe not the suburbs?

The Tennessean reports here that all 14 defendants in a RICO criminal prosecution against local members of the MS-13 gang have been convicted and sentenced after entering guilty pleas. The racketeering (RICO) convictions bring longer criminal sentences than the individual acts of violence, which included "murder, attempted murder, and witness tampering." The original indictments were brought in 2007 (story here).

These 14 people constituted only "one percent of one percent of the Latino community in Nashville," according to a statement made by Jim Cavanaugh of the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to the Nashville City Paper (story here).

It had been hoped that these efforts eliminated MS-13's presence in Nashville. At the time of the indictments, Sgt. Gary Kemper of the Metro Police Gang unit told the City Paper that the arrestees constituted most of the local membership of the mostly Salvadoran gang. Kemper told the City Paper, "As far as the crime within the Hispanic gangs, it’s cut down, I’d say, 80 to 90 percent" (story here). And this 2008 press release from Metro Police stated that "[t]hanks largely to the efforts to the Gang Unit, this investigation and federal prosecution may have eradicated the presence of an MS-13 cell in the Middle Tennessee district."

But this story from a week ago reported that MS-13 and Brown Pride are active in Nashville suburb LaVergne. There is no mention of how many people are involved there.

Credit for the Nashville convictions was shared by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jimmie Lynn Ramsaur and the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Middle District of Tennessee; Trial Attorney John Han and the Criminal Division's Gang Unit; the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department's Gang Suppression Unit; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement; and the Davidson County District Attorney General's Office.

Photo by emtboy9. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: el salvador, justice

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New library privileges in Davidson County jails

Vanderbilt University graduate student Amada Armenta is collecting Spanish-language paperbacks and magazines for immigrant inmates in Davidson County jails:

As we all know, there are hundreds of immigrants who are currently incarcerated and awaiting removal in Davidson County jails. Up until several months ago, immigrants in custody did not have library privileges. Now they do, but the collection of available books in Spanish is tiny. I am working to change that by collecting Spanish language paperbacks and magazines to donate to the jail.

You can help! If you have any Spanish language paperbacks or magazines that you would like to donate, please let me know. I will come and pick them up.

Armenta can be contacted via e-mail at amada.armentavanderbilt.edu

Photo by Rafael Alvez. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: immigrants, justice, spanish

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Comments on Post Politics:

• "Oh, I know. He did it to himself, by breaking the law. I know that. But this approach of public humiliation of people for this kind of crime — while the much more serious and more violent real criminals I just mentioned are given anything close to comparable treatment — is just flat out wrong."
• "The practice of public shame as punishment for legal violation that is not significantly criminally sanctioned is puritanical and disgusting."
  
• "This is a violation of personal privacy for something that arguably shouldn’t even be a crime..."
• Unfortunately, this incident has the potential to overshadow a lifetime of contributions to civility and robust discourse in politics. I would urge all of us to remember Teddy’s legacy as the details of this situation unfold.
• I wish him well. He has done important work. It is always good to try to see the whole person.

The day before the story above broke, HispanicNashville.com ran (this story) on the proper role of law enforcement discretion in Nashville and the need for the punishment to be tailored to the severity of the offense.

Metro Police should be commended for this reminder on their arrest web site:

These individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

That could be one reason (among others) to refrain from using the word "illegal" as a noun when identifying this particular person.

Labels: immigrants, justice

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ICE says Nashville implements 287(g) in a manner "contrary to the objective of the program"

Sheriff originally agreed that only threats to the public would be detained and deported

Reality: misdemeanors were a whopping 80% of deportations

After conducting a performance audit from September 2007 to January 2009, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report about the so-called 287(g) program, which establishes local-federal partnerships for immigration law enforcement. This report relates to Nashville in that we are a participant in 287(g), and the report calls into question the fact that 287(g) is used to process minor crimes, which is what happens in Nashville and not in the great majority of jurisdictions reviewed for the report. The most recent statistic for Nashville is that 80% of people processed for deportation under our 287(g) program were originally arrested for mere misdemeanors (story here).

According to today's Tennessean, Sheriff Daron Hall says he wasn't told that the program should be limited to more serious crimes:

When the law was written, surely it didn't say you can only process violent criminal offenders once they're convicted," said Sheriff Daron Hall, who initiated the 287g program locally in April 2007. "If that's part of their mission, it surely isn't something that's articulated."

Hall's right that the narrow focus of 287(g) wasn't on paper, but his quote above doesn't reflect his past statements in which he acknowledged and even agreed with the focus on serious criminals.

Two years ago, Hall told the Nashville City Paper here that his office would not detain people under 287(g) unless they posed a threat to the public:

In an interview Wednesday, Hall said he understands exactly what the program's purpose is. "The purpose of this is not to automatically deport people. It's to avoid ignoring them," Hall said. And Hall said he agrees with the group that his officers should not be detaining suspected illegal immigrants who pose no threat to the public.

The "group" referred to in the quote above is the advisory group Hall set up in regard to 287(g). At the time, this group raised the concern that what Hall said about using public threat level as a detention criteria should have been included in the document proscribing his 287(g) authority:

[T]hat concession [Hall's statement about not detaining suspected illegal immigrants if they pose no threat to the public] may still not be good enough for many area immigration rights activists who believe thousands of illegal immigrants will either be deported or required to prove their legal status just for minor infractions such as driving without a license.

"The way forward has to be that they say we're going after people with criminal records," [Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Director David] Lubell said. "If someone comes into the jail with a criminal record, fine, those are the people we should be dealing with, not people who have no other record and are simply in for traffic violations."

Lubell suggested including in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) - the document written by the Sheriff's Office and DHS that governs local implementation of the program - a written policy spelling out that traffic violators would not be targeted. "That would start the conversation," Lubell said.

The gap in documentation that Lubell and other advocates called attention to at the time is the same gap that the GAO identifies as a problem in this year's report:

According to ICE senior program officials, the main objective of the 287(g) program is to enhance the safety and security of communities by addressing serious criminal activity such as violent crimes, human smuggling, gang/organized crime activity, sexual-related offenses, narcotics smuggling and money laundering committed by removable aliens.

However, program-related documents, including the MOAs and program case files for the initial 29 participating agencies, the 287(g) brochure, training materials provided to state and local officers, and a “frequently asked questions” document do not identify this as the objective...

Out of 29 agencies reviewed by the GAO, Nashville is one of only 4 that is acting outside ICE's intent for the program by detaining and deporting for minor offenses:

[O]f 29 program participants reviewed by GAO, 4 used 287(g) authority to process individuals for minor crimes, such as speeding, contrary to the objective of the program.

So is this disconnect between ICE's vision of 287(g) and Nashville's implementation of it Sheriff Hall's problem or ICE's? Hall seemed to imply on the front end that he would follow the letter of 287(g) - he told the Hispanic Nashville Notebook in January 2007 that "ICE regulations will determine how it is implemented" and that "if you are illegal and committing crimes, and arrested by the police department, you will be processed through this program and could face deportation" (interview here). The government is now saying that ICE should have controlled the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) better - that is the finding of the GAO - but could Hall have influenced what went into the MOU? This story doesn't have that answer.

But what is clear is that Hall is running one of only four 287(g) programs - out of 29 reviewed - that chooses to throw a wide net, as opposed to focusing on dangerous criminals. Whether Hall wants to be acknowledge now that he knew ICE's intentions for the program at the time it was first put into place here, it appears to be his call now as to whether he is going to implement the program in the way that ICE intends. ICE certainly isn't forcing him to throw the wide net.

If ICE rewrites the MOU, however, Hall would be forced to target dangerous criminals. Maybe we citizens can ask our government to get started on this GAO recommendation and tighten up the MOU.

For the various instances in which this concern has been raised before in the Hispanic Nashville Notebook, you can consult these stories:

• There is an opportunity here for our sheriffs, mayors, senators, presidential candidates and voters to recognize the difference between workers and real criminals and support enforcement measures which put the violent criminals at the front of the line. (October 2008)
  
• The controversies are usually over the bear traps carelessly set for not only dangerous criminals but also for ordinary unvisaed workers and sometimes even legal immigrants and citizens. (October 2008)
  
• [M]ost Hispanic and immigrant advocates believe that dangerous criminals should be the focus of immigration enforcement efforts, and not ordinary immigrants without visas, the vast majority of whom are in violation of a law only due to their having a job and not by causing public safety problems. (June 2008)
  
• Davidson County public defender Ivan Lopez was quoted in this front-page article in the Tennessean on Sunday as saying that a Nashville-ICE partnership program called 287(g) "was sold to the public as a way to take dangerous criminals off the street" but that "[i]n reality, what's happening is you are breaking up families." (April 2008)
  
• Catalina Nieto, public awareness coordinator for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said that she commends any program that removes dangerous criminals from the streets but that the screening program is a "clumsy tool" to do that. (March 2008)
  
• HNN: Is the primary purpose of 287(g) to enhance your ability to protect the population from dangerous criminals who also happen to have no valid immigration status, or is it something else? How does your office attempt to accomplish this now in the absence of 287(g)? Has there been any success on this front without 287(g)? Sheriff Daron Hall: "The ultimate goal is to increase public safety by detaining and removing those who pose a risk to the Nashville community." (January 2007)
  
• We need to be prudent and conscientious when drafting the Memorandum of Understanding. (January 2007)
  
• I believe you would be hard pressed to find a single immigrant or immigrant advocate that doesn’t believe in incarcerating or deporting criminals. The people living along Nolensville Road want the same things for their community that those living along West End Avenue want. (January 2007)
  
• One concern about the program is that it will not distinguish between dangerous criminals and ordinary people. For example, Tennessee has stripped driving privileges (and motor vehicle insurance) from many noncriminal legal and illegal immigrants, which makes it more likely that they will be processed by law enforcement for driving without a license, even though they have not committed any violent crimes. In one recent instance, even without 287(g) in place, a local mother named Claudia Nunez was scheduled for deportation when she showed up to traffic court. (January 2007)
  
• Federal officials disagree with the way Nashville is treating people like Ms. Nunez. "Temple Black, spokesman for ICE [formerly known as INS] in the Southeast, seems puzzled that Metro law enforcement would expend resources on busting undocumented workers who aren’t dangerous criminals. 'What we are focused on is aggravated felons…. We don’t go down to the Shell Station and pick up [undocumented workers].'” By seizing Ms. Nunez and people like her, Nashville implements a policy that stands in contrast to ICE's view that resources should be prioritized in a manner to best address the greatest threats to the community. (October 2006)
  

For more stories in the Hispanic Nashville Notebook about 287(g), click here: http://www.hispanicnashville.com/labels/287g

Photo by Matt Blaze. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: 287g, immigrants, justice

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Chief Ronal Serpas: "Our police department views the El Protector Program as a critical service"

On February 27, NewsChannel5 reported here that the Metro Nashville Police Department has won national recognition for its El Protector program, which engages the Hispanic/Latino community with communications in both English and Spanish. The Vera Institute of Justice recently recognized the Nashville program in this report of "best practices" by law enforcement officers addressing language-related challenges.

On the same day of that local story, NewsChannel5 also reported here that Vanderbilt students are canceling spring break trips to Monterrey, Mexico due to violence there. A Reuters report describing the Monterrey incidents mentioned by the Vanderbilt students is here. The report says that "[a]bout 300 protesters carried signs complaining about army operations in the northern city of Monterrey," and indicates that the protests were funded by drug cartels. It further says that "the army is disrupting drug gang operations, but is failing to cleanse Mexico's corrupt police forces that are working for the cartels."

The corruption of police in some Latin American countries is one reason for Nashville's El Protector program, according to one of the local officers interviewed by NewsChannel5. In the video accompanying the story, Officer Gilbert Ramirez said that one of the goals of the program is to communicate to natives of Spanish-speaking countries who are living in Nashville that they can trust the police here. The program's ability to effectively communicate by bridging language barriers is part of the reason it won recognition by the Vera Institute.

“Our police department views the El Protector Program as a critical service that reaches out to a segment of our community who may not be familiar with American, and particularly Nashville, law enforcement practices,” Chief Ronal Serpas said in a press release. “I am grateful that the Vera Institute of Justice believes that our program is one that can be considered for replication by other law enforcement agencies in the United States.”

Officer Rafael Fernandez and Officer Gilbert Ramirez are the current face of El Protector. Both appear on the program's bilingual home page on the MNPD web site.

Labels: awards, justice, mexico, spanish

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From the Middle Tennessee Hispanic Democrats:

The Middle Tennessee Hispanic Democrats are excited to invite you to their first meeting in 2009!

Please join us this coming Thursday February 26, 2009 at 12:00pm at the TNDP Headquarters (Freedom Room) to our first meeting of 2009. This reunion is very special as we will get together to celebrate the 2008 elections and our accomplishments with English-Only.

The Middle Tennessee Hispanic Democrats will also be electing new officers and discussing new projects for this exciting year.

Please ask your friends to join us!

We hope to see you there,

Myrna Velasquez
Editor
(615)870-4121

Labels: events, justice

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Tennessee Governor Brownlow created state-level commission in 1869 and published handbook to attract immigrants in 1870

"Workers were sorely needed to rebuild the state, and outside capital was necessary to stimulate a sluggish economy."

Greg Siskind: "Immigration as stimulus"

A lot of people have been calling for a leveraging of immigration policy to address the current economic crisis, including the following:

• Memphis' Greg Siskind ("Immigration As Stimulus - 10 Ideas for Using Migration Policy to Jump Start the Economy and Create Jobs");
• The Center for Global Development ("Solve the Crisis by...Kicking Out the World's Best and Brightest?"); and
• MTSU's Martin Kennedy (pointing to Alex Tabarrok's "Buy a House, Get a Visa") (hat tip: Post Politics)

Although the crises created by the Civil War and the one we find ourselves in at the start of the 21st century are worlds apart, there is Reconstruction-era precedent for attracting immigrants to the State of Tennessee in a time of economic crisis. Tennessee Governor William Brownlow created a state-level Immigration Commission for this purpose in 1868, which in turn published The Tennessee Handbook and Immigrant's Guide in 1869. Robert Donald Rogers, in his M.A. thesis The Tennessee Staatszeitung, writes that Governor Brownlow's personal view of immigrants was quite negative, but the practical reality was that "[w]orkers were sorely needed to rebuild the state, and outside capital was necessary to stimulate a sluggish economy."

Despite the suggestions of Tennesseans Greg Siskind and Martin Kennedy, the prospect of using immigration as stimulus does not appear to be incorporated into any of the state-level proposals on immigration that are described in today's article in the Tennessean.

Labels: business, history, immigrants, justice

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Labels: events, immigrants, justice

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Sheyla Paz Hicks (of Paz Communications Inc. and SPANISH-TV) alerted me to this fundraiser to help stop human trafficking in Nashville. The event is 7-11pm tonight at the Tin Roof and features five artists - The Harters, The Lowry Sisters, Telephant, Jessica Brandhorst, and Sleep Til May. Cover is $5; suggested donation is $10. Proceeds will benefit Free for Life Ministries.

The Nashville City Paper reported here in July 2007 that there were "multiple brothels in Nashville with prostitutes that are exclusively foreign nationals of Latin American countries" that were at the time "the target of a statewide FBI investigation into possible sex slavery at the hands of an indicted Mexican national," and that more instances of trafficking were suspected but had not yet been uncovered. At the same time and in the same article, it was announced that Nashville was getting assistance from the U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services to form a “Rescue and Restore Victims of Human Trafficking” coalition, "to arm local agencies with the tools necessary to help identify trafficking and slavery victims." That coalition can be found at nashvillerescueandrestore.org

In 2006, the FBI freed a 14-year-old Mexican girl from forced prostitution in Nashville. In 2008, two men were arrested for forcing a 22-year-old Mexico City woman into prostitution at a Nashville motel. More stories at nashvillerescueandrestore.org

Labels: justice, mexico

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Nashville celebrates its remarkable character as a welcoming, friendly, and international city

Details here.

Photo by Josh Hunter. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: english, immigrants, justice

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If you live in Davidson County, please consider voting today (Thursday) in the English Only special election. I would ask that you vote against ratification of both proposed amendments to the Nashville charter. Every vote will count in this election, so please take a second now to imagine yourself voting sometime between now and 7pm, and then make it a reality before then. Check your voting location here.

My personal story of opposition to these amendments is of course heavily influenced by my sweet wife Damariz. We were married right before I started my second year in law school. That following summer, when Damariz had been in the U.S. for less than a year, she was taking English classes at the International English Institute on Music Row. Damariz is a determined student, and she often stayed up late at night in our studio apartment near Vanderbilt doing homework. At the time, she was not yet fluent in English or able to do any complicated reading comprehension. Also at this same time, I was teaching her how to drive, since public transportation is so good in Chile, and she had never needed to learn. She learned how to drive in much less time than it was taking her to learn English (fancy that), so you can imagine how much it meant to me to find out that the State of Tennessee offered study materials and the written drivers license exam in Spanish. Tennessee didn't have to provide any language assistance to her at all, and all of the rest of the test was still administered in English, but how wonderful that the written materials were made as accessible as they were! To this day, I remember the genuine pride I felt as a Tennessean knowing that the Volunteer State had volunteered to be this hospitable to her, and that she would no longer be relegated to sitting at home by herself while I was at school or the law firm.

The city of Nashville has a litany of communications and services like the written drivers license exam that are offered in other languages. Sometimes the additional languages are added for the city's own benefit and not necessarily the sole benefit of the person on the receiving end of the communication. Language-related expenses, if not already tied to federal funds, are justified every year in the Metro budget by every program and department that uses additional languages beyond English. In my opinion, it is in our nature as Nashvillians to reach out when reaching out makes practical and hospitable sense. The unnecessary change of English Only, however, would be to remove the common sense from these decisions and burn into our city constitution a default rule against this kind of reaching out, with variances only at the gavel of the Metro Council or as required by federal or state law (also known as the Metro Legal Full Employment Act).

I encourage you to read the two proposed amendments at http://www.nashvilleforallofus.org and take a look here at the flurry of city-wide support of the status quo (all I want is the status quo - let city government use additional languages when appropriate.) If you look at the wording of the English Only amendment, you may agree with me that its change to the status quo is not only contrary to the hometown spirit I was proud of when Damariz and I were still getting her adjusted to life in Nashville, but it is so poorly worded that even the Nashville City Paper opposes it based on sloppiness alone (see here). As for the second amendment, it makes it easier to get sloppy charter amendments on the ballot.

If you don't live in Davidson County, please consider forwarding this to your friends who do. If you are unsure about this vote, or if you disagree with me, please send me an e-mail, as I believe there are a lot of people in town who at first glance supported the concept of English Only but have come to oppose it after further reflection (see here and here).

But if you live in Davidson County and haven't voted yet, please participate in this important event today in the life of our city. After we celebrated a dream on Monday and inaugurated a president on Tuesday, today is Nashville's moment on the main stage, and I have hope that we will be true to ourselves and get it right - one vote at a time.

Labels: english, immigrants, justice

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Hispanic Nashville Notebook opposes constitutional amendments

Subscribe to NashvilleforAllofUs.org

Early Voting January 2-17

Election Day January 22

From now until January 22, the Hispanic Nashville Notebook will feature the Nashville for All of Us logo above, urging its Davidson County readers to vote AGAINST RATIFICATION of the constitutional amendment imposing English Only. It is reckless, rude, and red tape. It is frivolous legislation.

For more information:

• NashvilleforAllofUs.org
• Nashville for All of Us Official Blog

Labels: english, justice

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Beck calls "the 40 years before 1965" the "golden age" of immigration

A friend of mine with Korean ancestry asked me about a speech by immigration restrictionist Roy Beck of NumbersUSA. In it, Beck promotes the seemingly objective proposition that there are too many immigrants being allowed into the U.S. My friend asked me what the response is to Beck.

I watched a video of Beck delivering his short presentation (gumballs have earned it a sticky notoriety), and one specific comment Beck makes before the 1-minute mark stood out: he calls "the 40 years before 1965" the "golden age" of immigration. When I heard that, the graphic above immediately came to mind.

By "golden age," does Beck mean that the four decades of 1925-1965 had the right numbers of immigrants, or does he mean that those decades saw "normal" levels? The answer for Beck is, both. Even though many other decades of American immigration history saw much greater numbers than were seen from 1925-1965, Beck nonetheless describes the number of immigrants during that period as a "traditional level." You can judge for yourself which decades of American immigration have been more or less typical; I doubt you will choose 1925-1965.

Even more sobering is the moral baseline Beck establishes by framing that period of time of our immigration history as "golden."

This so-called "golden age" not only coincides with the Great Depression and its aftermath, but it begins immediately after the passage of the 1924 Asian Exclusion Act, which ushered in race-based immigration quotas and (as the name suggests) largely excluded Asians - necessarily meaning that most Asians who immigrated during that time period were illegal immigrants. The timeframe of this "golden age" concludes upon the passage of the civil rights-inspired Immigration Act of 1965, the purpose of which was to dismantle race-based immigration quotas.

A response to Beck?

His own words should suffice.

"You have to have some kind of benchmark."
-Roy Beck

Edited January 8, 2009 to add this comment from Memphis attorney Greg Siskind:

There has only been one period of a closed door in this country and 1925 to 1965. That is hardly typical.

It was that restrictive policy that was behind the US turning away hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants in the Holocaust. Is there any more shameful period in American immigration history than the 1939 pictures of the SS St. Louis off the coast of Miami filled with 900 Jewish passengers? They were ultimately denied entry and the ship sailed back to Belgium. Most of the passengers died in concentration camps. My good friend Chuck Blatteis here in Memphis is the son of one of the few survivors of the St. Louis. I remember meeting Nashvillian Rosemary May a few years back. She was Dutch and ended up in a concentration camp after their US visa was ultimately delayed so long (quite deliberately, of course) that they were stuck in Amsterdam when the Nazis took over and rounded everyone up.

Definitely a “golden age” in US immigration.

Labels: history, immigrants, justice, statistics

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Yesterday, Mike Byrd at Enclave described immigrant policy politics as "a fight to which Tennessee is late in coming..." (see here).

In response, I reviewed Tennessee's recent history using the lives of immigrants as a political weapon, with 2006 being a pivotal year here, as it was in the rest of the country:

"a fight to which Tennessee is late in coming..."

I understand your point if you are saying that Tennessee's most recent immigration comes after similar waves that came less recently to other parts of the country. Otherwise, if you are saying that Tennessee hasn't been in the thick of the immigration wars over the past few years, it is to the credit of those on the immigrants' side of the fight that you have that impression.

Things really started heating up on a national scale in 2006. One key event was that the U.S. House voted to make all illegal immigrants felons in HR 4437. That extreme measure sparked the major pro-immigrant rallies across the nation and united conservatives and liberals in opposition - the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land shared a stage with Teddy Kennedy, for example.

Tennessee was right there with the rest of them.

In the summer of 2005, FAIR convened here with Marsha Blackburn and Phil Valentine in tow. About that same time, a Middle Tennessee judge ordered a woman to learn English or lose custody of her children. The next thing you know, the state Republicans are announcing their formation of an immigration task force. In November 2005, Steve Gill signaled that immigration would be the GOP's wedge issue against Bredesen in 2006.

If you're calling immigrant politics a "fight," the fight had been brought to Tennessee. Natives and immigrants alike took action in response.

Gatherings were held, thousands marched in solidarity, workers staged a walk-out, students trained in advocacy, and billboards went up proclaiming our state a Welcoming Tennessee.

Marsha Blackburn held a Congressional hearing in which she set up health care executives to scapegoat illegal immigrants for cost pressures in TennCare, they refused to comply, and she refused to listen.

My readers imagined political campaigns in which their views on immigration were trumpeted instead of some of the scapegoating that was popular at the time.

Avi Poster hosted one of his first educational forums on immigration, from which was born the Coalition of Education about Immigration.

Claudia Nunez was taken from her family and scheduled for deportation - and at about the same time the Nashville City Paper ran an editorial calling for a simplification of the path to legal status.

In nearby Marshall County, a trilingual librarian was defended by the library board after her bilingual storytimes came under fire.

Still, in 2006, English Only was launched during Hispanic Heritage Month, starting its successful run in the Metro Council before it was vetoed in 2007 by Mayor Bill Purcell. Also, Gustavo Reyes became the justification for Davidson County asking for 287(g). The Nation ran a cover story finding nativism in Nashville. Phil Valentine broke out the "shoot him" solution. Police responding to a call about "a couple of Mexicans" shot and killed Fermin Estrada in front of his family at a barbeque he was hosting on his own land.

We've really been in the thick of this for a while. That it's not an all-out-war in Tennessee is to the credit of advocates, immigrants, and the legislators who have stood up against the negativity.

Unfortunately, you're right about none of this being over on January 23, 2009. For example, in January 2007, one of the questions I had for Sheriff Hall before 287(g) was formally launched was, what happens next? It's no shock that the answer was open-ended:

HNN: When illegal immigrants continue to commit crimes after 287(g), what is the next power or set of powers that you could envision being requested for your department or for the police department?

Hall: That is a question for the federal government. They would be the entity that would determine whether or not they want to give local jurisdictions any further powers.

Even though others are already planning their next steps to antagonize immigrants, I am hopeful that with each passing year, history is taking Nashville further in the direction of humanity and hospitality.

We certainly have a chance to move in the direction of humanity and hospitality when the English charter change proposals come up for a vote in January - if we defeat them.

Consider the timing of when the special election will be held: the week of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The week of the inaugural.

This is Nashville's Moment. It very well may be Tennessee's year.

We should not allow our optimistic spirit to be quenched and our neighbors to be demonized as they are used as mere political pawns. We cannot let anyone advance the minute hand on the doomsday clock for immigrants - which also debuted in 2006.

Sign up with Nashville for All of Us. Join the Facebook groups in opposition to English Only. Sign up for a phone bank.

We got here through 2006. Let's define our 2009 with our history, our legacy, our grandchildren - and our neighbors - in mind.

Photo by Diego Sevilla Ruiz. Licensed under Creative Commons.
This post includes modificiations from my original comment on Enclave.

Labels: english, history, immigrants, justice

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The Knoxville News Sentinel conducted a roundtable interview with local Hispanic business leaders in that city - the article is worth a read.

Some excerpts:

Mother unaware her daughter was in the infirmary

I do think that the state governments have certain measures to care for the community. Public schools do a great job of taking kids. They don't ask. They don't care if your parents are legal - if a kid was born here or not. If you live in the area, you come to school no matter what. So that's great. However, there are like three or four translators for the whole county. That's not enough. I've been as a mom in meetings at the school where all the parents are there and the principal of the school has asked me to translate? And he sits me in a corner with all the Hispanic parents, and me a parent, is translating the meeting. So, yes, they're taking the kids, but it doesn't stop there. A lot of these parents don't speak English. I'm just using public schools as an example because that's what I see every day. A Hispanic lady called me and said "can you please call school. They are calling me. I don't know what's happening. And they just tell me OK, OK." She didn't know what they were saying. I called. Her daughter was throwing up in the infirmary and they wanted her to pick her up. If you're going to take the kids, you need to care for that community.

FBI apologizes

I was at the Citizens Academy of the FBI and one of the agents mentioned that the Hispanic community was growing and with the growth of the Hispanic community they also brought their problems, which is gangs. So I raised my hand because I thought, well I'm part of that community. I don't think I bring my problems like a gang. So I make the correction that the problems follow all these gangsters, they follow the community because we are a target of them. Then they made the correction and apologized.

Photo by Timothy Wisniewski. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: business, education, english, justice, language, spanish

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Lots of people have been asking about the Nashville for All of Us group. That group has just launched its web site:
www.nashvilleforallofus.org
The group can be contacted at contact@nashvilleforallofus.org - or, if you want to volunteer, the e-mail address is volunteer@nashvilleforallofus.org

They have a sign up page, and contributions are being accepted for a campaign.

I have already signed up the Hispanic Nashville Notebook as a member of the Nashville for All of Us coalition. Please continue to advocate as you have been, but now there is a new, city-wide group for us to get plugged into as well.

Please also consider if your own group should join the growing number of supporters of the Nashville for All of Us coalition.

Labels: english, justice

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Nashvillian Eric Volz announces his Nicaraguan murder re-trial days later, denounces hidden motives

NewsChannel5 reports here that a Nashville jury has unanimously acquitted a young man accused of murder who is in the U.S. without a visa.

Two jurors told NewsChannel5 that they couldn't "add all of [the evidence] up together" under the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard, and they therefore could not vote to convict the defendant Jose Murillo Sosa of the tragic and brutal murders of Lori and Adrian Rountree. One of the jurors said that they "don't want a guilty man walking free" but that they also "wouldn't want to see an innocent man spend time in jail."

The fact that the jury could see an unvisaed defendant as potentially innocent at all and apply the same "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard to him as they would to any other defendant is a testament to the American justice system working out the difficult decisions of guilt or innocence with an even hand, at a time when unvisaed immigrants in the U.S. have been the target of a great deal of negativity in recent years.

The acquittal came within days of the news that Nashvillian Eric Volz announced that he is to be retried in Nicaragua for the similiarly brutal and tragic murder of his ex-girlfriend (story here), in a case in which he says the accusations against him are fueled by anti-immigrant (in this case, anti-American-immigrant) sentiment in Nicaragua (story here). Volz was originally convicted of this murder and spent over a year in jail, but his conviction overturned on appeal (story here).

In the recent acquittal, Nashville is providing an example to the world of what it means to have equal justice for all, reinforcing in at least this one case the previously expressed opinion by Davidson County District Attorney General Torry Johnson that even illegal immigrants can get a fair trial in this city.

Hat tip: Political Salsa

Labels: immigrants, justice

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Hundreds write letters, blog posts, join new Facebook groups

Nashville residents are increasingly urging an "Against" vote on January 22, in opposition to the proposed English charter change (also described as English Only, English First, or a language ban).

With the ballot box little more than two months away (and early voting starting even sooner), the grassroots opposition has been simmering for months on blogs and in letters to the editors of local newspapers, and it has now spread to Facebook groups and a number of organizations around town.

There is still no public campaign being waged by the group called "Nashville for All of Us," which has filed with the Election Commission for the purpose of opposing the measure (story here). The lack of any public movement by the group has been lamented by the Nashville City Paper in this editorial.

But ordinary Nashvillians are speaking up, with or without a formal campaign.


Four new groups on Facebook, for example, are only days old but have drawn hundreds of members:

• Nashville's Moment Is Now, with 480 members at last count, including testimonials from
  • Gabi Castillo
    
  • Eddie Gray
    
  • Tanja August
    
  • Laura Creekmore
    
  • Susan McBride
    
  • Thuy Nguyen; and
    
  • Ben Vos
  (The group, which I started, is also available outside Facebook at nashvillesmoment.com)
  
  
• Nashville for All of Us (170 members at last count, in support of but not officially representing the Election Commission-sanctioned group of the same name)
  
  
• Vote No on English Only (162 members at last count, also at noenglishonly.com)
  
  
• Vote No on the English Only Referendum on January 22, 2009 (168 members at last count)

Blogs

On local blogs, there are a number of comments advocating defeat of the measure, for various reasons excerpted below.

Aunt B.:

Pushing an anti-immigrant agenda–with your “English-only” nonsense and your 287(g) programs and your raids–makes employers, especially international employers leery of locating here. It’s not just a matter of whether they want to hire “illegal” immigrants. It’s that we look hostile to people who are different than us. If an employer in, say, Japan wants to set up a technology-based industry in the U.S. (perhaps to save on shipping), he’s going to want to send a core group of people over here to set up the business and run it, at least for a while. If you’re going to send your best and brightest, most trusted employees half-way around the world, you’re not going to keep those employees if you send them to a place that openly hates them.

...makes employers, especially international employers, leery of locating here.

Jay Voorhees:

The only want that we can overcome this movement is to make sure that the turnout to vote against his legislation is so overwhelming that they dare not bring it for consideration again.

So Nashvillians, it’s time to get the network moving. Contact all of your friends, your family members, anyone who thinks that this election is a waste of time and money and that that this legislation is inhospitable, and get them to vote against this proposal.

Contact all of your friends, your family members, anyone who thinks that this election is a waste of time and money and that that this legislation is inhospitable...

Rosanne Ferreri-Feski:

Nationwide negative press has also followed Nashville in the wake of its desire to spread "English only" throughout metro government offices. USA Today, among others, has written negative reviews about our city, a city which touted itself on being inclusive and diversity-forward in its marketing. The nation is watching Nashville and we are giving them plenty to discuss.

The nation is watching Nashville and we are giving them plenty to discuss.

Mike Byrd has an entire series of posts on the topic, including this one:

[The] English Only charter referendum, coming for a vote in January, will live or die on the votes of the African American community, just like California's Proposition 8 resolution did last week. It will be ironic if Eric Crafton wins his fight against Nashville's immigrant community the same week we commemorate the contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr. to the American civil rights struggle.

...the same week we commemorate the contributions of Martin Luther King, Jr. to the American civil rights struggle.

Erica Well:

As it stands, the amendment removes instead of clarifies, and diminishes Metro instead of strengthens it. If enacted as is, it means Metro government will not allow itself to translate any of its government business paperwork into any other language. So (just for starters) DMV forms, car registration forms etc., -- all that ancillary government paperwork translated out of courtesy to new immigrants so they can conduct their proper business as they learn English -- will no longer be in other languages other than English.

So what's wrong with that, you say? They have to learn English, you say. It makes no sense, I say. English is not absorbed by osmosis, it is learned. (And on a larger scale, anyone remember being taught about the Rosetta stone back in High School?)

It then makes no sense that Metro should cut back on its authority over its new immigrant citizens by not providing translations for certain services. Why would we cut back on our authority? Metro has to make this basic paperwork available in other languages so people can do the right and legal thing when they get here.

It then makes no sense that Metro should cut back on its authority...

Nathan Moore:

No rationale for pushing for this charter amendment, either substantively (which I have discussed before) or procedurally, can be taken from a conservative political philosophy. It is too late to pull back now - the signatures are in. But we can take a lesson about this before January, and realize that just because this snipe is on the ballot, it doesn’t mean we have to pass the Metropolitan government equivalent of the Third Amendment.

No rationale for pushing for this charter amendment, either substantively ... or procedurally, can be taken from a conservative political philosophy.

Rob Robinson:

Surely there is a better way to serve the public than preying upon people who already have uphill climbs ahead of them.

...preying upon people who already have uphill climbs...

Nathan Day Wilson:

My family and I lived outside the United States for a short period of time. The country where we lived does not have English as a primary language.

For us, going to the grocery store or sending a letter back home or helping our children meet and play with other children at the park or finding our way to church the first time were all challenges. Many times our saviors were people patient with our very limited abilities in their language and people who were willing to try their little bit of English to help us understand. Their generosity allowed us to survive.

And now a part of my country -- a part of the country that I, in fact, used to enjoy -- is not going to return the favor. I'm ashamed of those in Nashville who pushed this effort, and I hope and pray it is soundly defeated in November.

Many times our saviors were people patient with our very limited abilities in their language...

Letters to the editor

The Tennessean and Nashville City Paper have also published letters to the editor against the English charter change, including these:

Johnny Ellis:

[P]our money into primary education services that will teach all children to read and write in English and to love Tennessee.

It will be cheaper, easier and does not slap the face of your neighbors and future citizens.

...neighbors and future citizens.

Bill Wright:

I agree if someone chooses to live in a country and is not fluent in the language, they should make every reasonable effort to learn the language but that doesn’t mean we should expect them to be proficient in it from day one, or not provide any assistance to help them along the way.

I have to believe the people pushing these agendas have never traveled outside our own country and would have a different attitude if they “walked a mile in their shoes.”

...they should make every reasonable effort to learn the language but that doesn’t mean we should expect them to be proficient in it from day one...

Todd M. Liebergen:

[T]ake the time and money that you’d like to use for the petition campaign and actually help those wanting to learn English. Encourage all those that mention it to you to also step forward with their time and/or money.

In many cases, it’s not the motivation to learn English that is lacking, it’s the resources of having classes available at the times the learners need (some people actually work), at the levels that the learners need (some know no English and others know some and others are mostly fluent), in the format the learners need (some need individual tutoring while others can use a lecture hall size class).

Take the time and money ... and actually help those wanting to learn English

Brent Andrews:

It is only good service and good manners to speak to people in their own language when possible.

...good service and good manners...

Photo by Josh Hunter. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: english, justice

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Roundup of Nashville voices before, after election

Mario Ramos:

Vote Obama today

Political Salsa:

Today may the moment in U.S. history when young Americans finally get the respect they are due.

If Sen. Barack Obama sweeps to victory, it will be due to an unprecedented participation in the electoral process.

And if they do so, it will be because they have examined both candidates and found one to offer more hope.

Coyote Chronicles:

If Obama should win, especially if he wins big, I’d really like to see my fellow Democrats being graceful in victory. Part of the attraction for me to Mr. Obama was his demeanor, and he and his wife are classy at all times. We can do our part after the fact by being magnanimous and reminding people that the real work is just getting started. Because it is. I will diligently monitor the Obama administration, and it my single biggest hope that he communicates to America that we must evolve as a Nation, it is well past time that we recognize that our standard of living cannot be maintained indefinitely. Ask us to volunteer. Ask us to conserve. Ask us to step up and contribute.

Bilingual in the Boonies' twitter feed:

Watching history ... mccain is giving a beautiful speech ... If McCain had spoken like this for the last few months, he may have been elected ... I'm going to have a whole lot of pissed off relatives tomorrow. I may not answer my telephone for days.

Image: ABC News

Labels: justice

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"To say that a Latino who doesn't speak perfect English is not a citizen is simply wrong"

Raul Lopez, president of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Tennessee, and Fabian Bedne, president of the Middle Tennessee Hispanic Democrats, stubmitted a joint statement to the Tennessean about U.S. citizen voters who don't speak English.

From the statement:

To say that a Latino who doesn't speak perfect English is not a citizen is simply wrong; there are a variety of reasons why this could happen. While it is generally true that naturalization applicants must be able to read, write, speak, and understand words in ordinary usage in the English language, many individuals are specifically exempt from this requirement, including the following applicants, who on the date of filing:

>> Have been residing in the United States pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence for periods totaling 15 years or more and are over 55 years of age.

>> Have been residing in the United States pursuant to a lawful admission for permanent residence for periods totaling 20 years or more and are over 50 years of age.

>> Have a medically determinable physical or mental impairment, where the impairment affects the applicant's ability to learn English.

Furthermore, residents who arrive here from places such as Puerto Rico, where English is not the official or dominant language, are U.S. citizens from birth. Puerto Ricans who live in the U.S. are, of course, allowed to register to vote and are not required to submit to a language test. Accordingly, they may not yet have acquired a command of the English language.

Labels: english, justice

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The Tennessean is publishing this series with locals talking about America, including one interview with Andres Bermudez, a carpenter whose parents immigrated from Argentina. Bermudez talks about how Americans are relatively safe from their government compared to citizens of other countries, and how he believes immigrant policy should be inspired by the Statue of Liberty.

The Tennessean separately reported here that a razor-thin, within-the-margin-of-error majority of Middle Tennesseans opposes a proposed ban of foreign language use by Metro government:

Forty-seven percent of those polled said they would oppose or lean toward opposing a measure that would bar Metro government agencies from translating written materials into other languages or offering interpreters to the public. Forty-six percent of voters indicated they would support the measure, and
7 percent didn't know or declined to answer.

"This country was built by immigrants," said Arthur Ebbets, a retired naval aviation instructor who participated in the poll. " … Here we have some people who are in the early stages. And in the early stages I don't think that they should be held back."

Ebbets, who grew up in New York, said the newness of immigration to Nashville may attract some to the measure.

The Spanish-language local daily El Crucero reported in its October 24 edition that 78% of Hispanic Nashvillians favor Obama, as opposed to 13% who favor McCain.

The survey size of both the Tennessean poll and the El Crucero poll was 200.

Some local Hispanic voters are weighing in on this Post Politics entry about the support for Bush among Hispanics in 2004.

Finally, local blogger Aunt B expressed consternation in this post earlier this month when she learned that Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President Yuri Cunza was seriously considering McCain.

Labels: argentina, immigrants, justice

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"Keep on protecting us from the dangerous aliens."
-Agent K

What do Nashville Scene writer PJ Tobia and Tommy Lee Jones' Men in Black character Agent K have in common? (Hint: see this post by Tobia and this clip from MIB.)

Give up?

The answer is an appreciation for the difference.

Few would disagree, but few also consciously remember, that there is a difference between working without a visa and murdering without a visa.

Of course working and murdering are different; it is nearly unfathomable that anyone would not be able to tell the two apart. And yet, Tobia and the fictional Man in Black are among the few who remember this difference.

You yourself might be surprised at your capacity for flubbing the difference. For example:

• In the middle of a political discussion about immigration, you might not think too disapprovingly of the argument (or you might yourself make the argument) that anyone without a visa is a criminal*. A Wisconsin man took this position in a letter to the editor he wrote to the Scene ("Border call-out") in response to Tobia's piece.
• Your congressman in the 2006 U.S. House of Representatives might have cast one of the votes that passed HR 4437, which would have turned all unvisaed immigrants into felons. (Even though it was rejected by the Senate, passage of HR 4437 is what sparked the 2006 marches.)
• In Nashville, you might unconditionally support the local-federal immigration enforcement program called 287(g). That's the one we use to tear ordinary, noncriminal families apart in the name of crime prevention, even though the program can't be counted on to prevent crime (which was Tobia's point).

Lumping work visa violators into a pot with violent criminals desensitizes us to the difference between work and murder, making us divert legislative and law enforcement resources away from specific and undeniably harmful acts of violence and toward a contested economic threat like unlicensed labor.

This diversion and diffusion of resources away from the real criminals is why the stepped-up immigration enforcement crackdowns of the last few years still seem like a drop in the bucket. While our federal and local efforts take increasingly random pot shots at the larger unvisaed population containing millions of decent people, the smaller population of violent criminals will only coincidentally be swept up here and there.

There is an opportunity here for our sheriffs, mayors, senators, presidential candidates and voters to recognize the difference between workers and real criminals and support enforcement measures which put the violent criminals at the front of the line.

Until those proposals are made, we can either be prone to forget (a lack of interest can be just as powerful as the Men in Black's little red light), or we can choose to remember and remind ourselves of the difference.



*For facts disproving the everyone-is-a-criminal argument, look at the Chattanooga numbers for this April 2008 roundup, in which administrative but not criminal charges were filed against 100 visaless workers.

See also: The Immigration Serenity Prayer

See also: this story on Claudia Nunez and bear-trap bureaucracy

See also: "See" (a commercial for HispanicNashville.com)

Labels: 287g, immigrants, justice

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The Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Tennessee recently published some promotional videos with both Spanish and English messages, including this one:


Among the people featured in the videos are the organization's chairman Raul Lopez, Vice Chair Juan Borges, and local businesswoman Marcela Gomez, whose YouTube profile hosts the videos.

Three other videos in the series:

• Fiscal Responsibility
  
• Immigration
  
• Family Values
  

Labels: english, faith, immigrants, justice, spanish

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Photo Credit Bill Larson, Clarksville Online
Used with permission
Clarksville Online reported here on the recent Latinos for Obama House Party at the Montgomery County Democratic Party Headquarters in Clarksville, featuring Fabian Bedne as speaker:

The Montgomery County Democratic Party Headquarters, 534 Madison Street, served as the host site for the Latinos For Obama House Party. As a prelude to the 2nd presidential debate, the gathering was a well attended affair that drew participants from beyond just the Latino/Hispanic community.

Fabian Bedne, an architectural engineer, was the guest speaker for the event.
...
Bedne stated that he is a supporter of educational achievement and economic development. In the past, the Black community and the Latino/Hispanic communities have both received the same political consideration in American politics, namely that of being ignored or taken for granted, marginalized.

During his address he noted that issues of concern to the Latino/Hispanic community are the same as with the Black community. He stated that many assume that immigration is the top concern of Latinos and Hispanics but that is incorrect. “We care about the economy, education, the war and then immigration, in that order.”
...
During the question and answer session that followed his address, an audience member asked, ” “How do you answer someone who tells you vote your biblical heritage?” Another individual responded saying, “I would tell them, my biblical heritage tells me to vote for someone who will help the poor, who will feed the hungry, who will shelter the homeless and clothe the naked and drive the moneychangers out of the temples. Someone who will do unto his fellowman as he or she would wish done for himself.” This response was soundly applauded.

Labels: faith, justice

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Few aware that compensation for injury available to all workers despite immigration status

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports here on the fear among unvisaed Hispanic workers when it comes to reporting injuries on the job, even though Tennessee law requires payment of workers compensation claims regardless of immigration status.

One young Chattanooga woman is reported to have had her scalp literally ripped off on the job, but she will not report it because she is afraid of being deported out of the U.S.:

Joe Wolverton, a worker’s compensation attorney reaching out to the Hispanic community, opened his office in the Highland Park neighborhood about three months ago and says he’s heard about people who are afraid to speak out.

“We had a girl that had her hair caught in a machine and had her scalp ripped off,” he said. “This young lady was about 23, her whole life in front of her, but now she is disfigured. But she didn’t want to pursue the worker’s (compensation) case because she said she was here without papers, hadn’t used her real name and was afraid immigration would come get her.”

Mr. Wolverton said he explains to immigrants that in Tennessee the immigration status of someone injured at work doesn’t matter.

“In Tennessee, regardless of one’s immigration status, if one is injured at work, then he has every right to receive compensation during his disability,” he said.

The article states that the non-Hispanic White population makes up 72% of reported work-related injuries in Tennessee; 14% are Black non-Hispanic; 19% are Hispanic; and 3% are Asian. The number of fatal occupational injuries in Tennessee are 118 White; 17 Black; 8 Hispanic; and 3 Asian.

Photo by Annie Reid. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: business, immigrants, justice

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Six-figure price tag

Voters will address no other issue January 22, 2009

From the Tennessean:

It's set — Metro Nashville voters will decide on Jan. 22 whether to keep city business from being done in any language but English.

But it's going to cost them. The Davidson County Election Commission, which on Friday certified petition signatures necessary for the vote, estimated the special election will cost $350,000 to $500,000.

The council must vote on taking money from the reserves or elsewhere to pay for the election, Metro Finance Director Rich Riebeling said.
...
Commission Chairman Eddie Bryan abstained in protest.

"I am still on the money thing," Bryan said. "That's not good, and it hurts us down the road. And they are connected to a hate group. I want no part of it."

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is on January 19, 2009.

Anyone who lives
inside the United States
can never be considered an outsider
anywhere within its bounds."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Labels: english, justice

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Negative tone has been rejected by some Christians, but continues nonetheless

Less than one month after the Hispanic Nashville Notebook called for evangelicals to get it right on Hispanics and immigration (see here), Bob DeMoss and Mark Whitlock, two well-known Christian writers from the Nashville suburb of Franklin, Tennessee, are selling a product they call "Obama Waffles," in which Barack Obama appears in caricature in a Mexican sombrero, and references are made in jest to multiculturalism, foreign languages, and "illegal aliens."

Also this month, advocates of the proposed English Only foreign language ban superimposed the faces of their perceived political enemies onto a poster of the movie The Three Amigos, in which the characters are wearing Mexican mariachi uniforms (story on the Nashville Scene blog here).

Why would these caricatures be of concern for a Christian? Here's what I said last time:

In an environment in which Hispanics and/or immigrants are the subject of politically generated suspicion and scorn, it certainly isn't right for Southern Baptists and other evangelicals to gin up more suspicion and scorn.

Put another way, you don't use in a political barb the imagery of Mexicans and/or immigrants (even unvisaed immigrants), when mere association with them is the joke, if you are a Christian hell-bent on loving your neighbor as yourself. The negativity of it is wrong, and good conservatives have both warned against this kind of tone in the past (see Leslie Sanchez quotes here) and also asked for forgiveness for it in Nashville's LP Field (see Sam Brownback quote here).

At the Values Voters Summit where the Obama Waffles were sold, the organizers eventually ejected DeMoss' and Whitlock's booth and condemned their product as having improper "tone and content" and having "crosse[d] the line into coarseness and bias":

Family Research Council Action executive director David Nammo released the following statement:

"We strongly condemn the tone and content of materials that were exhibited by one of the vendors at this weekend's Values Voter Summit. The materials represent an attempt at parody that crosses the line into coarseness and bias."

"The exhibitor contacted our reviewer just days before the Summit by email and described material that sounded like it was devoted to political flip-flops on policy issues. When the content of the materials was brought to the attention of FRC Action senior officials today, they were removed and the exhibit was dismantled by the vendor at our insistence. It is our responsibility to fully vet materials that are offered at any event we cosponsor, but we are deeply dismayed that this vendor violated the spirit, message and tone of our event in such an offensive manner."

"The Values Voter Summit represents a coming together of many long-established organizations that work across denominational and ethnic lines to celebrate and promote the family and a culture of life. We reject any communications that divide and distract us and frustrate these principles. Bishop Harry Jackson's High Impact Leadership Coalition, Gary Bauer's American Values, and Alliance Defense Fund join us in rejecting this material."

Source: Christianity Today

Explanation

When asked why Obama was pictured in a sombrero, DeMoss and Whitlock gave the following explanation to the American News Project (video here):

"Positions on the, the border... We're havin' th-, him, erase the line between the U.S. and Mex-"

As of September 25, neither DeMoss nor Whitlock had responded to a Tuesday, September 16 e-mail request for an interview (sent to interviewrequests@obamawaffles.com)

Apology to Lou Dobbs

DeMoss and Whitlock have repeatedly defended their Obama Waffles product as "humor." To the extent that they have apologized for anything, it has been not for the box itself but for something else: having posted a picture of Lou Dobbs on their web site without Dobbs' permission. According to the story on ObamaWaffles.com (here), "the caption of the [since removed] post read:

"Lou Dobbs: 'My Wife Will Love This!'"

Images of Obama Waffles box: American News Project; Image of "Three Amigos": Nashville Scene

Labels: business, english, faith, justice, mexico, negativity

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Will any of these ideas show up at Legislative Plaza in 2009?

Looking for appropriate ways in which state-level laws can positively address immigrants and immigration, the Progressive States Network has published an exhaustive report called the State Immigration Project, offering a five-pronged approach:

Progressive leaders need to promote policies that will highlight that those leading the anti-immigrant charge are actually against the interests of working families of all races and immigrant status. Key progressive immigration strategies include:

Wage Enforcement as Immigration Policy

Encouraging Immigrant Integration and Naturalization

Immigrants and Public Benefits

Voting Reform versus "Voter ID" Attacks, and

Immigrant Outreach as Public Safety and Anti-Terror Policy

Tennessee's past record on positive immigration legislation is mixed. On the positive side, last year's legislative session passed an anti-racial profiling bill and rejected 65 bills that were identified as harmful (here) by the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. Two other positive immigration law developments in Tennessee, cited by this Progressive States report, are a notario (lawyer impersonator) fraud prevention law passed in 2006, and an anti-trafficking law passed in 2008.

On the other hand, this Report paints Tennessee's approach overall as punitive because of legislative moves regarding employer sanctions, ID laws, and 287(g).

I thought that one glaring error from the public safety and anti-terror section of this report was the lack of a proposal that focuses law enforcement resources on dangerous criminals who also happen to be unvisaed. There's opportunity there, since no one opposes targeted enforcement against real threats to pubic safety. The controversies are usually over the bear traps carelessly set for not only dangerous criminals but also for ordinary unvisaed workers and sometimes even legal immigrants and citizens.

I'd also like to see some positive, symbolic measures, like a pro-immigrant license plate.

Hat tip: Tim Chavez, who reviewed this report and reached this conclusion.

Labels: 287g, immigrants, justice, reputation

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Culture and civic engagement, Symphony conductor, and Salsa night among other events

More information about upcoming Heritage Month events hosted by the Hispanic Cultural Center at Austin Peay State University, from the AllState student newspaper:

The Hispanic Cultural Center (HCC) hosted Café Hispanico on Wednesday, Sept. 10 in Morgan University Center room 308. Accounting clerk Pat Treviño facilitated the open conversation about ways to preserve Hispanic culture by sharing her own genealogy research with students who attended the event, entitled "Preserving Hispanic Culture in a Multi-Cultural Society."
...
The HCC will host two more Café Hispanico events this semester on Tuesday, Oct. 21 and Tuesday, Nov. 4.

The Oct. 21 event is entitled "Hispanic Culture with Respect to Civic Engagement".
...
The HCC will officially kick off Hispanic Heritage Month with a guest lecture by Nashville Symphony conductor Giancarlo Guerrero. Guerrero will speak at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 23 in the Music/Mass Communication Concert Hall. Salsa Night will be held at 8 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 3 in the Foy Fitness Center. The HCC will close out Hispanic Heritage Month with guest speaker Alina Fernandez, daughter of former Cuban president Fidel Castro. Fernandez will speak at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 16 in the MMC Concert Hall.

A complete list of events can be found on the HCC homepage.

Labels: arts, cuba, education, events, justice

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"We celebrate Tennessee's proud Hispanic heritage"

A few days after the Tennessee Republican Party issued this press release marking Hispanic Heritage Month, the Tennessee Democratic Party mentioned the holiday in its "Munday Message" mailing from Wade Munday:

A MESSAGE FROM MIDDLE TENNESSEE HISPANIC DEMOCRATS CHAIR FABIAN BEDNE

This month, we celebrate Tennessee's proud Hispanic heritage from their military service to their cultural influence in our state's formation. It is time to recognize our multi-cultural influence in our nation and our state.

We know the struggle as ordinary Americans hoping to grasp the American dream. America's proudest heritage are the women and men who have worked to advocate for freedom and prosperity through hard work and a responsible government.

Join the Middle Tennessee Hispanic Democrats this month as we celebrate the work of Hispanic Democrats and our cultural heritage.

Labels: justice

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Sean Braisted posted the names of every Davidson County resident who signed the English Only (foreign language ban) petition. See Sean's post here, which also includes a link to the downloadable Excel file.

Labels: ban, english, justice

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A Hispanic-American Family Festival and Voter Education and Registration Drive will take place this Saturday:

HISPANIC BUSINESS LEADERS, COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS, SPANISH MEDIA AND YA ES HORA TENNESSEE! (Now's the Time Tennessee!) SUPPORTERS AND VOLUNTEERS JOIN IN A COMMUNITY EFFORT TO REGISTER AND EDUCATE VOTERS

Eligible U.S. Citizens to Register to Vote and Learn How to Use Voting Machine

What: Hispanic-American Family Festival - Voter Education and Registration Drive

When: Saturday, September 6th, 2008 from 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Where: Coleman Community Center, 384 Thompson Lane, Nashville, TN

Why: Latino voters across the United States are expected to be a key constituency in the upcoming elections. Over nine million Latinos voted in 2004, and up to ten million are expected this year. With education and healthcare as two of the populations most pressing concerns, the Latino vote will impact the election results in November.

Ya Es Hora Tennessee! launched its voter education campaign earlier in the summer with the goal to actively educate people about the importance of voting, when and where to vote, and how the process works.

Labels: english, events, justice, spanish

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I'd like to know what's being done to advance the proactive immigration plank of Nashville's Agenda, a 2007 plan for Music City:

IMMIGRATION

To make Nashville the best it can be…

Identify ways to encourage understanding of immigration issues – including the problems associated with illegal immigrants – in a broader context of valuing cultural diversity and encouraging appreciation for new Nashvillians.

* Create more positive image of immigration in the city. Encourage corporate and political leaders to educate city on value of diversity and immigration. Find ways to increase cultural awareness in Nashville through more city-wide celebrations like the Celebration of Cultures festival. Educate public about differences between immigrants and illegal immigrants with a focus on the total immigrant population.
* Expand diversity training to identify cultural differences provided in the workplace, school, religious institution and govt.
* Encourage local corporations to “adopt” at-risk or immigrant neighborhoods for civic training and job placement.
* Provide a database and services that are multi-lingual to address specific newcomer needs.
* Convene a group of policy-makers to develop a special driver’s license for undocumented immigrants that, at a minimum, allows them to drive to and from work.
* Create an Office of Immigrant Integration that provides education, information services and forums that encourage civil conversation
* Hold “civics” classes at schools and libraries for new Nashvillians on local laws, government processes and services available.
* Create a leadership academy which partners immigrant leaders with native Nashvillians to expand partnerships and create stronger leaders.

Hat tip: Nashville Post

Photo by Joel Meulemans. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: business, education, english, immigrants, justice, spanish

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Nashville author Edward Ronny Arnold has self-published George's Flag, a fictional novel about a Hispanic political uprising that is decades in the making, culminating in the year 2040 with the election of the first Hispanic president of the United States.

George’s Flag and its author Mr. Arnold were listed at the 2007 Southern Festival of Books, and Ron Wynn of the Nashville City Paper described the work here as “very intriguing” and an “entertaining, exciting tale.”

What I found in George's Flag, however, was a first draft instead of a finished product. As may be a hazard inherent to self-publishing, this work of fiction needs improvement in plot and character development, subject matter research, spelling and grammar. Despite the accolades of the Southern Festival of Books and the City Paper, I don't think the 548 pages of this book are ready for prime time.

The problem isn't so much that the plot is wildly nonsensical, which it is - from the central idea that six children would launch and sustain a 40-year presidential campaign, to the surprise transformation of a central character from a mild-mannered young woman into an Israeli-trained killing machine - with many similar twists and turns in between. There are just too many rough edges in the book to sustain any suspension of disbelief.

For starters, the characters do and say unnatural things - a drinking game could be based solely on the frequency of the various characters' fits of laughing for no apparent reason. The Catholic characters repeatedly confuse the Bible with Ben Franklin in the same grammatically awkward way ("God helps those that help themselves.”) Many of the diverse members of the book's cast make bold pronouncements about the future ("They will fail!") Some people may talk like that in real life (an apparent example is here), but I don't think it's as much of the population that George's Flag would have us believe.

The spelling errors are also too numerous for a final published work. References are made to “Chicago, Illinois Mayor Richard Daily” (his name is “Daley”), an immigration proposal to “wave” instead of waive fees, measurements made with a “gage” and not a gauge, students from “Berkley” as opposed to Berkeley, a “mute” and not a moot point, “loosing” as opposed to losing, and the government being not liable but “libel” for its abuses.

Even putting aside the plot, characters, spelling, and grammar, the greatest challenge for any future revision of this book is the author's recognition that he does not have an intimate understanding of his subject, Hispanic people. Arnold openly admitted to me by e-mail, “My experience with the Hispanic community is limited.”

This lack of experience explains Arnold's rookie mistake of translating portions of the dialogue into Spanish using only computer translation software. The easier and better alternative, if native speakers were not available to assist with translation, would be to eliminate the Spanish text altogether, and indicate through italics or some other device that Spanish was being spoken. Letting a computer mangle the language, and leaving the subject matter of the book largely unresearched, has the effect of making George's Flag unreadable from the point of view of a Hispanic or Spanish-speaking audience.

Given Arnold's admitted unfamiliarity with the subject matter of the novel, the question arises, what compelled this author to write George's Flag? Arnold answers by describing his personal affection for Hispanic Americans:

I have observed for many years the kindness, gentleness and strength of the Hispanic men and women as they shop at Kroger. There is an old saying; you can tell a "real" man easily, he is the one holding the baby. He is so strong he can be gentle. I see many Hispanic men holding babies. I have observed the interaction of the families and it is one of respect. My wife is from the Philippines and there are similarities.

I have often watched Hispanic men work, they work their butts off. Also, I have been to Mexico and been to the poor areas on three occasions. My friend, [name deleted], also has been to Mexico many times. He tells so many wonderful stories of the people. The inspiration for the book came from observing a large group of Hispanic men, women and children at my daughter's closing ceremonies for Pre-K at Fall-Hamilton Elementary school in 2006. They proudly recited the Pledge of Allegiance and clapped loudly for "every" child that received a certificate. It occurred to me that there is a new generation of Americans. These Hispanics have not abandoned their language and culture but embraced America and its ideals.

In light of Arnold's apparently positive opinions, his inclusion of starkly negative dialogue throughout the book can be shocking:

• “taco heads” and “illegal taco heads”
  
• “perra” (multiple times)
  
• “stupid Mexicans” (multiple times)
  
• “stupids”
  
• “bastards”
  
• “Mexican slut whore”
  
• “blood thirsty, drug crazed killers”
  
• “They are like sheep”
  
• “You slept in a bed that a Mexican slept in .. Did you get sick?”
  
• “Father Sinclair laughed. 'You really think you can get a wealthy American man or woman to vote for a Hispanic?'”
  
• “He stated that he was afraid he would get taco stains on her suit from her loud mouth.”

The reader gets no indication that this kind of vocabulary or dialogue is uncommon in the fictional America of George’s Flag. For instance, the "taco stains" quote is attributed to a presidential candidate, who suffers no apparent political fallout as a result. We don’t know whether the author thinks the U.S. is already at that level of negativity or, if we are not, how he thinks we will get there.

What the book does offer in the way of insight into Hispanic identity comes across as alien to me. For example, there is little mention of the way I understand most Hispanics and Latinos identify themselves, which is by national origin - my friends describe themselves or their families as being from Mexico or Honduras, for example. The characters in George’s Flag, on the other hand, see themselves through Mayan, Aztec, and other such lenses. That may be how some people identify themselves (and it may be useful for a plot point late in the book), but not any of the many Hispanic Nashvillians I know identify themselves that way, from community leaders to former clients to my fellow believers at a local Spanish-speaking church.

What this book could use the most are the themes, ideas, movements, strategies, and the kind of people and perspectives that would come with greater familiarity with Hispanic people and Hispanic politics. What about a nod to the differing opinions on immigration within the various Hispanic communities and how they might change as we move toward 2040? There are substantive issues other than immigration that will draw Hispanic voters to the polls between now and then; explore how the political landscape will or will not change as those issues mature. Various existing and interesting statistics about long-time American Hispanic families and new Hispanic immigrants could be extrapolated into the future, as well. The Hispanic Americans whose families have been in the country since long before the 21st century could certainly get more attention in a book supposedly about the future of Hispanic politics in America. A growing number of Hispanic Nashvillians are readily available for an author to interview on these various topics, and input from them would be invaluable to any future rewrite of this novel (and also to local, state, and national politics, for that matter).

In its current form, George’s Flag is in some ways memorable, from the computer-giddy nuns on page 97, to the souped-up Ferrari with the Lincoln Town car body (funded by and blessed at the Vatican) on pages 141-151, to the Hispanic politician described on page 426 as a “great lawyer” because “he is very blunt and screams a lot,” to the convenient summary of the plot on page 451, in which a character says, “Sounds like a good book.”

Despite my interest in Hispanic themes and politics, and my appreciation for the fact that a local author wrote over 500 pages combining those subjects, George's Flag is not polished, researched, or readable enough to stay on my bookshelf. Like the book's heroine who was born in 2000 and groomed to be president in 2040, the 2008 version just isn't ready yet.

Labels: arts, justice, negativity

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Fabian Bedne has been confirmed as an Obama Alternate Delegate for TN to the Democratic National Convention, the Hispanic Nashville Notebook has learned.

"I look forward to meeting with other Latino Democrats from around the Country and learn from them," said Bedne.

Bedne's civic and political involvement was summarized in a recent Hispanic Nashville Notebook story here.

Labels: justice

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Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America has launched The CCA 360, a PR site dedicated to various explanations about company-related issues that have attracted national attention and criticism:

Unlike many blogs, "so-called" informational Web sites or news outlets that purport to cover or report objectively on the private prison industry and Corrections Corporation of America, the content here does not reflect a narrow agenda or view point. Instead, TheCCA360.com offers a more complete 360-degree perspective, citing official government records, official documents and respected experts and sources on issues and happenings that impact the company and its industry.

Immigrant detention is the primary focus of the site's Resources page. Elsewhere on the site, the company's spokesperson and company executives defend the company on other issues.

Previous CCA-related stories on HispanicNashville.com can be found here.

Labels: business, immigrants, justice

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Putting aside for a moment the various other reasons that English Only has been publicly opposed by

• Mayor Karl Dean and the Metro Council
• city leaders
• Bridgestone Americas
• the editorial board of the Tennessean
• the Davidson County Democrats, and
• this Goodlettsville Republican,

one crucial question is, does the proposal itself amount to a foreign language ban? In other words, could Metro still choose to communicate in other languages when federal or state law does not require?

Metro Nashville government has multilingual communication strategies in a variety of areas, including the following, and it is important to know to what extent, if any, communications related to these topics are in jeopardy:

• legal rights
• a child's first day of school
• domestic violence
• recycling
• rape victim resources
• financial counseling
• Homework Hotline
• recidivism-reducing DUI education
• pet ownership tips
• access to health care, and
• tornado siren instructions

The English Only proposal's sponsor says they're safe. In today's Nashville City Paper (here), the Councilman who is pushing English Only (and calling it English First) is saying that city agencies will still be able to choose to communicate in other languages, even if federal or state law doesn't require them to:

The second-term Councilman also said he’s frustrated with the misconception that the proposed charter amendment would forbid Metro from offering services in other languages.

“Clearly there’s a difference between somebody having a right and the city choosing to provide it if they want to help.”

The text of the proposed city charter amendment (akin to a federal constitutional amendment, but only for Nashville) is what the city would have to abide by if it passes. The answer to the language ban question, therefore, has to be found in the amendment itself, here:

English is the official language of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee. Official actions (those which bind or commit the government) shall be taken only in the English language, and all official government communications and publications shall be published only in English. No person shall have a right to government services in any other language. All meetings of the Metro Council, Boards, and Commissions of the Metropolitan Government shall be conducted in English. Nothing in this measure shall be interpreted to conflict with federal or state law.

I'd be interested to hear how readers interpret the language above. Can Metro still communicate in foreign languages by choice if we insert this clause into our city's legal DNA?

Photo by Tim O'Brien. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: english, justice

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Charlemos Spanish, one of Nashville's Spanish chat groups, sent out this press release announcing its upcoming speakers:

Sister Cities of Nashville’s Spanish social conversation group, Charlemos Spanish, announces its speakers for the beginning of the 2008-2009 season. Each meeting begins with a presentation, in Spanish, followed by small group conversation, in Spanish.

Charlemos Spanish meets the second and fourth Thursday of the month from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Palette Gallery and Cafe at 2119 Belcourt Avenue in Hillsboro Village. All levels of Spanish-speakers, from beginner to native, are invited. The event is free and open to the public.

The speakers are:

* Leticia Mason--originally from Guadalajara, México; a lawyer and certified Spanish court interpreter in the state of Tennessee; “Spanish court interpreters in Tennessee and main differences between the American justice system and the Mexican justice system”; 11 September
* Natalia Pelaz--Spanish professor at Belmont University; originally from Spain; “Until soccer united us--How the European Cup created a sense of Spanish unity”, 25 September
* Paulo Boero--Spanish professor at Belmont University; originally from Argentina; moved to Nashville at the age of twelve; will speak about Argentine film, 9 October

Charlemos Spanish was created in December 2006 by the Spanish Committee of Sister Cities of Nashville, a nonprofit organization, founded in 1990, dedicated to the promotion of global understanding through educational, professional and cultural exchanges.

Sister Cities of Nashville has one Spanish-speaking sister city--Mendoza in the wine country of Argentina. Nashville has developed a successful high school student exchange with Mendoza. Sister Cities is currently exploring a relationship with Chihuahua, Mexico. A formal International Friendship City relationship with El Port de la Selva, Catalonia, Spain is pending.

Mayor Karl Dean is the Honorary Chair for Sister Cities of Nashville.

Charlemos Spanish is for persons who wish to:

* Speak Spanish on a regular basis
* Make bilingual friends
* Learn more about Hispanic culture.

The founder and president of Charlemos Spanish is Elizabeth Worrell Braswell. Ms. Braswell is an online Spanish instructor for Austin Peay State University and a board member of Sister Cities of Nashville.

For directions and more information on the gallery go to: http://www.palettegallerycafe.com

Contact:

Elizabeth Worrell Braswell
615-202-0482
elizworrell@comcast.net

Monica Mackie
director@scnashville.org

Photo by Dragunsk Usf. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Labels: argentina, education, justice, mexico, spain, spanish

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Immigration bureaucracy is "one of the more consistent customers"

Facility in Georgia is "all-ICE"

National press picks up problems

In an interview with the Tennessean here, Damon Hininger, newly appointed President and COO of Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America, identifies the immigration bureaucracy as one of the company's bedrock businesses and points to greater integration with the federal enforcement arm.

So far this year, problems with CCA's performance in the area of immigration have been brought to life with vivid stories in the New Yorker ("The Lost Children"), the front page of the New York Times ("Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in U.S. Custody"), and a cover story in the Nashville Scene ("Locked and Loaded").

From Hininger's interview in the Tennessean:

On the federal side, our main customers are the U.S. Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We have a new (federal) contract out in Las Vegas, and we are getting ready to start construction of a 1,072-bed facility there — the Nevada Southern Detention Center.

If you look at the last eight years, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has probably been one of the more consistent customers we've had. They have two potential procurements for another 4,000 beds that we think they'll take some type of action on next year. It would be beds for criminal aliens — non-U.S. citizens, low security.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, our very first contract with them goes back to our company's founding in 1983. We continue to work with them and in pretty creative ways. Our facility down in Lumpkin, Georgia, in Stewart County has turned into an all-ICE facility.

It has courtrooms for immigration judges and other space for about 60 federal caseworkers who work on deportation issues. We put services on site so there's no transport required to a federal courthouse or to a federal immigration office in Atlanta. Everybody is under one roof and detainees can go through the system very quickly.

ICE is challenged on bed space all over the country, but that picture improves if you have detainees going through the system in 30 days, let's say, instead of on average 60 days.

Photo: Corrections Corporation of America

Labels: business, immigrants, justice, reputation

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WSMV and the Tennessean reported (here and here) on the discovery Friday of a one-day-old infant girl hidden among some bushes on McDonald drive in Nashville, which is a street that runs just north of Briley Parkway, near Murfreesboro Road.

According to WSMV, "Tennessee has what's called a 'safe haven' law, meaning a person can legally leave an infant less than 72 hours old at a hospital, police station or fire house with no questions asked."

The police say the child is Hispanic, according to the WSMV report.

Illustration of Pharoah's daughter* by Bethanne Andersen.

*This is off-topic, but at a time when many are caught in the crossfire of what is often a confused and unnecessarily negative policy debate about personal responsibility vis-a-vis immigration law, I find it both instructive and exhortative that Moses' mother violated national law by hiding him instead of killing him, as did Pharoah's daughter by saving him. Considering that the law had come from her own father, Pharoah's daughter betrayed more than just her country - she betrayed her family. As a result, according to the Jewish tradition I learned about here, Pharoah's daughter was renamed "daughter of God."

In the words of Patricia K. Tull, A. B. Rhodes Professor of Old Testament, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (audio and PDF here):

She is not in a position to change her father's laws or heart. But she listens to the baby's cries and follows her own law, her own heart. Lacking the power to change governmental policies, the Pharaoh's daughter nevertheless overturns a society gone terribly awry.

Labels: immigrants, justice